Disneyland Videoblog

Last weekend I met my friends Kristen and Mark down at Disneyland for some good times in the not-always-so-warm California sun. As part of my adventure, I decided to try something new and record a bit of a video blog of the fun. It was my first time using the Flip MinoHD recorder, and it leaves a bit to be desired. As you will notice, there is absolutely zero image stabilization, so unless I was standing in one place, it was pretty hopeless to get a steady shot. But that didn't stop me from getting some hilariously entertaining clips, and a capture a bit of the Disney magic on film. Enjoy!

Pictures and Updates

OK, nearly 3 months since my last post. I'm lazy. BUT, some good has come of it...

Pictures

I finally got around to uploading all of the pictures from Disneyworld back in August. Find them in my photo album. The only problem is that going through them all again made me just want to go back again. Good thing I'm going to Disneyland next weekend. :)

Holidays and Stuff

Well, I survived the holidays. Nothing too exciting there, it was holidays, it was vacation, it was what it was.

OK, on further observation, nothing exciting has been happening. I have a slew of random posts to make about random things. Those are more entertaining anyway. I'll get around to that... in probably 3 months.

Denver - Day 7

A late night and an early morning.  I think I got about 6.5 hours of sleep, and morning came around way too soon.  We had the last men's draw this morning, followed by one women's tiebreaker that was necessary for seeding.  At 4pm today we have one men's tiebreaker as well, followed by the 8pm 1v2/3v4 playoffs for the women.  Fortunately, I don't have to work until the 8pm draw tonight, which means naptime is coming up soon. 

And things are getting a bit hectic around here, as NBC just arrived and they're going to start getting things ready to broadcast the semi-finals and finals live on UniversalSports, their new all-Olympic sports station.  You can find it in Seattle on Comcast channel 115, or over the air (if you have digital antenna) on 5.2.  Check local listings for other stations.  For reference, the schedule is:  

Women's Semi-Final: Friday 4pm MST (3pm PST)

Men's Semi-Final:  Friday 8pm MST (7pm PST)

Women's Final: Saturday 10am MST (9am PST)

Men's Final:  Saturday 3pm MST (2pm PST)

I'll be on the ice working the Friday 4pm and Saturday 10am draws, so feel free to look for me if they get bored showing coverage of the teams and I happen to walk by. :)  

Denver - Days 4-6

So busy I haven't had much of a chance to blog updates.  When I've been in the hotel room, it's been mainly to sleep.  But I have a few minutes here so I thought I'd update the past few days.  

Monday was business as usual, working a few draws and finding times to eat and sleep when it was convenient.  

Tuesday was my day to go do some things around Denver.  I started out by heading down to the U.S. Mint and taking a tour.  After going through a fairly intense security screening just to get in the door, we were taken on a short (about 20 minutes of actual stuff to see) walk through a observation deck where we could see the presses churning out pennies by the thousands (through some hefty glass, so we couldn't get our grubby little hands on them).  It was interesting to see the mint in action, and quite a bit of historical coinage and artifacts were on display, but overall I was unimpressed.  The tour was so constrained, there wasn't a whole lot to see and it just wasn't really worth the trouble, I think.  But I did it, so there.  

After that, I walked back downtown to the 16th Street Mall, which is the main shopping street through the middle of downtown Denver.  It's a pedestrian-only street, with the exception of some extremely convenient shuttle buses that continuously travel up and down the street, so you can just hop on and off as you want to quickly get from one end to the other.  Quite impressive.  

I went to the far end of the street, where I found the Colorado State Capitol building.  As it has become one of my quirky trip traditions to stop at every state capitol I come to, I went inside and wandered around the entire place.  Being a weekday, the house and senate were both in session, and I wandered into the viewing gallery to see a bit of the Colorado legislature in action.  They have a partial museum up in the lower part of the dome of the capitol which I went up to see, though unfortunately you can't climb all the way to the top of the dome, there was a viewing deck at the bottom of the dome.  Pretty interesting.  State Capitols are always fun to visit.  

I did some shopping on the 16th Street Mall and worked my way down to the other end of the city and over to Coors Field.  Not much going on there, but it was good to stop by and see where it was.  Finally made my way back to the car and left downtown.  Upon additional recommendations, I decided to drive all the way up to Fort Collins to check out the New Belgium Brewery.  Just a mile away from it happens to be where one of my sisters works.  I stopped by but she had already left for the day.  In any event, I've been on quite a few brewery tours, but the New Belgium brewery tour was by far the most entertaining I've ever taken.  Just a fantastic place.  

Tonight after I finished officiating at the early draw this morning, I drove back to Loveland, just south of Fort Collins, to meet up with my sister and have dinner with her.  It was good, mainly because if I went to Denver and didn't meet up with her, I'd never live it down.  :)  But we had a good time, and then I came back and here I am.  Now heading back over to catch part of the late draw at the trials before finding some more sleep.  Pictures to be posted later, it's always something.

More to come...

Denver - Day 2 and 3

It's been a relatively uneventful first couple of days here at the Olympic Trials.  Getting into the groove and not getting too much relaxing in at this point.  My initial impression that this wouldn't be much of a vacation has been so far true.  I put up a few pictures that I snapped tonight.  Nothing too exciting there either. I'll try to take some better and more interesting shots later in the week.  

This area (Broomfield, CO) is actually quite nice.  I definitely ended up with a winner with the hotel here.  Free made-to-order breakfast every morning (unfortunately, I'm not much of a breakfast person, so it's not exactly the most thrilling feature, and this morning I actually had to be out of here before they even opened), but the biggest advantage is that I'm not more than about 3 minutes away from the ice arena.  Brilliant.  I haven't had too much time to see much else, but expect to make it into the city on Tuesday.  The high altitude hasn't affected me much at all, though fortunately drinking lots of water and staying hydrated I think has helped that a lot.  What HAS bothered me is the dryness.  My hands especially are getting chewed up, and I need to constantly remember to put lotion on them or else they will die.  

Time to get some rest before the 6:30am alarm goes off.  Why is it always that I get up earlier when I am on vacation than when I'm not.  Something is seriously wrong. :)  

Denver - Day 1

Thus begins a series of blogs on my 8 nights in scenic Denver, Colorado.  I'm here primarily to officiate for the US National Curling Championship / Olympic Trials.  I worked the day today then caught a 6:45pm flight, which departed a few minutes late, but other than that was relatively uneventful.  

Arriving in Denver, I was greeted with sub-freezing temperatures.  All indications were that it had snowed earlier in the evening.  So after my luggage finally coming out, I headed outside to catch the shuttle to the rental car place (which is not so conveniently nowhere near the actual terminal).  After waiting outside in the 22-degree or so cold for about 15 minutes, the shuttle finally came and we made our way to the cars.  I ended up with a red Prius hybrid, at least that's what I think I unearthed when I froze my hand brushing off the layer of snow and then scraping the ice off the windshield and ungluing the wipers.  10 minutes later, I figured out how to turn on the silly car and how to use the 50 bazillion buttons and knobs.  I swear, I think this thing is more complicated than the space shuttle, and at night it looks like mission control, with the actual dashboard, plus the whole touchscreen that controls all of the audio/climate control/engine status, and then my life-saving GPS that I threw up on the dash next to it.  Finally we had liftoff, and I zipped out of the parking lot and on my way (getting something on the order of 40 mpg).  So then I had about 35 miles to get to Broomfield, not realizing that the shortest distance between two points involved toll roads.  $13 in tolls later, just after midnight local time I managed to made it to the hotel.  

Now the hotel I got on Hotwire.  If I was going to be here 8 nights, I wasn't going to pay a whole lot a night.  So with my luck, I ended up with an inn just a mile away from the ice arena where the competition would be.  The front desk closes at 10, but they had left an envelope with my room key out front (there are only 16 rooms here) and I made my way into the nice warm room without any problem.  This room is about as nice as some studio apartments.  King-sized bed, sink, microwave, minifridge, couch, gas fireplace, internet... can't complain too much for the $45/night I'm paying when the going rate for the room is about $129.  I'll take some pictures later.  

Well, at this, I need to get up in just over 7 hours.  Day 2 will continue tomorrow with the opening ceremony and first day of competition.  It should be interesting to see the arena all set up for curling.  

Vacation Wrapup and The Week Ahead

Without much trouble we made it back home from the islands, and never have I been more pleased to have 50 degree weather and a distinct lack of sun.  :)  Unfortunately, now I have a half dozen things to do in the next three days, not counting getting back up to speed with everything going on at work.  Running down the highlights of the calendar:  

• Tonight I need to make my way over to the curling club to meet my Thursday night team who wants to get some practice time in so we might be able to win a few more games this year.  Should be fun, hopefully I'm still awake by then.  
• Tomorrow I have a meeting for the Husky Band Foundation, followed by the customary pop culture trivia night at Jillian's.  That'll be fun and a nice break from work, but unfortunately, all these other things have to be done too.
• Friday kicks off the curling season with, of course, the league I manage.  So as usual I've got the next two days to figure out who all is planning to curl on Fridays, get a rough idea of how the teams will be all organized, and hope that nothing falls through the cracks.  Looking at my recent registration lists, I can see that there'll be plenty of the usual last minute people who didn't see fit to register early, and I'll have to shoehorn them into the roster in some capacity.  Why can't everyone in the world be more organized?  Seriously...
• Saturday I volunteered to help out with another curling open house, so I'll be back up there teaching folks how to curl again.  At least that'll be fun and fortunately with the Huskies bye this week, I don't have to worry about juggling that with a UW football game. :)
• In things without an allotted time, I need to do laundry from my trip sometime.  
• I need to figure out what Vancouver 2010 Olympics tickets I want to put into my order.  I've got about a month to figure that out, but I want to iron it out sooner than later, mainly because it's fun and it'll be cool to plan what I want to try to get tickets for.  How exciting.  And how ridiculously expensive can tickets to the Opening Ceremony be?  Oh, anywhere from $700-$1300 each.  Ouch! 
• Any number of other things I've forgotten.  What a week, what a week...  

Closing out the Week - Days 6 & 7

Sunday was a day of recovery.  We all had originally planned to get out and do things, but instead decided to spend the day around the house, playing in the ocean, and actually cooking and eating some of the food we had bought.  It ended up being a spectacular day.  

Monday Carley, Chad, Maija and myself made our way down to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial.  Last year when I was down here, I was too lazy to wait around for 2 hours in order to do the film and trip out to the memorial, but today we arrived around 11am and got tickets for 1pm.  That gave us 2 hours to leave and go over to Hilo Hatties to procure some fine Hawaiian merchandise before grabbing lunch at McD's and making our way back in time for the 1pm entrance.  

By the time we made it out of Pearl Harbor it was about 3pm and we decided to just head back to the house, having accomplished everything we had planned for the day.  We picked up some last minute provisions at the store before getting home to relax a bit then start making dinner.  We managed to use most all of the food we had bought at Costco, and everyone seemed to enjoy it all.  

After dinner, and making some BBQ smores, we took some time to do some tidying up around the house before we leave tomorrow morning.  I still need to get some packing done tonight, but besides that I think we're pretty much ready to go.  A successful and restful week of vacation is nearly complete.  

I think my internal clock will be a bit askew for the rest of the week trying to get to work on time, but thankfully I tend to adjust better traveling east than west, so I may be OK afterall.  

Aloha and Mahalo.  

The Wedding Day - Day 5

Saturday finally brought about the reason we all came here, Nick and Christie's Wedding.  Those of us spectators enjoyed a nice morning at home, and managed to catch the first quarter of the Huskies terrible performance before heading down the street to the wedding.  

I have to admit, this is the first beach wedding I've ever been to.  The weather cooperated, as we were just out on the beach behind the house Christie's family had rented, and it was slightly breezy with occasional clouds shading us from the sun.  The ceremony was rather quick, and quite nice, but I think we were all glad to get out of the hot sun once it was over and made the drive down the island to the reception.  

The reception was at Ko'olau Golf Course, which also has a large conference center/ballrooms connected to it.  Everything went perfectly (at least as far as I could tell) and everyone had a great time.  

They say a picture says 1,000 words, so go look at the pictures and I'll space you rest of the words.  

What has become a tradition at most of the Husky Band-related weddings I've been to in recent memory, as the evening wears on and the glasses compound on the table, my attempt to fashion a musical interlude was once again successful.  This time though we managed to get it on video for everyone's enjoyment.  

A Leisurely Friday - Day 4

Friday was pretty uneventful, by design.  For once we didn't make any big trips down to the south end of the island, and just took some time to relax and do things around the house.  This is what a vacation needs to feel like sometimes.  

For lunch, I took the opportunity to visit one of my mom's friends from college who happens to live less than 5 minutes from the house we're staying at here in Laie.  They have a beautiful house right on the water.  I remember visiting them probably 15 years ago when my family was down here, and haven't really seen them since.  But we had a good lunch and it was nice visiting with them for a couple of hours.  

I came back home and those of us around decided to head out to the beach.  The surf was quite a bit better than the other days, so the boogie boards were far more functional.  We played in the waves, and got plenty of white sand all over us.  After we were tired, tanned, or toasted, we came back in and later in the afternoon all of the wedding party-related folks were off to the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, leaving Annie, Adam and myself to relax and find dinner on our own.  

We decided to go down the street to a local drive-in place with "Hawaiian Barbeque"?  I think what we had was "Chinese food" but it was still good.  There aren't a lot of dining options in Laie, other than making good food yourself.  We stopped at the grocery store on the way home, and then pretty much relaxed the rest of the evening.  It was nice not being quite so busy.  

Today is the reason we all came... the wedding.  Once again, the wedding-related folks are all gone to get ready, and the rest of us are just hanging around until later.  There's plenty of college football on TV that's keeping us entertained, and we all hope to catch the start of the Husky game (around 1pm here) before the 3pm wedding.  

It's starting to feel like vacation - Day 3

Someone told me it was Friday today.  I'm not entirely sure.  

Whatever it is, yesterday was another eventful day.  Once again, we all seem to get up whenever it gets light out, which usually means sometime around 6:30-7am.  Yesterday was a bit more humid than the few before it, with frequent bouts of rain passing through and a noticible lack of wind.  Today fortunately the wind is back and flushing out the humidity a bit, which makes it much more tolerable.  

After getting everyone ready to go, Christie the bride came by and joined us to go up to Waimea Falls, which after getting to we decided not to pay the $10 to walk up to the actual falls, but went around the outer grounds and enjoyed the grenery of the Waimea Valley a bit.  Then we continued around the island to the obligatory stop at the Dole Plantation.  We rode the Pineapple Express through the pineapple fields, and of course I had the obligatory cup of Dole Whip.  Beyond that thouse, this place has gone from being a creative tourist promotion of Dole and pineapples, to being a total tourist trap trying to sell you everything from the food you eat to the massive amounts of Dole-related and pineapple-themed merchandise.  Not impressed.  

After the plantation, we headed back to the house for a brief moment in the afternoon.  =\\\\\\\-'

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Sorry for that interruption, baby Maija decided to inspect my keyboard to make sure the keys still worked.  She has now decided to go inspect the TV remotes on the table instead.  :)

Later in the evening, Nick's bachelor party required Chad, Adam, and I to drive down to Waikiki for dinner at Sam Choy's followed by hitting some bars downtown.  Dinner was good, but we didn't do much on the bar front before I was not feeling well from the long running days, and the three of us decided it was time to head back before it was too late, considering we had another hour drive to the north end of the island.  We made it back in around 1am and the night was over.  

Friday leaves a much less busy day, yet should have plenty of stories.  More on that tomorrow.  

Aloha and Mahalo - Day 2

Aloha. This will probably be a rather quick post because I'm tired, and it's been a long day. I guess that means it should be longer, but I'm lazy.

This morning I managed to wake up at, oh, about 6:30am. Or rather, at that point I couldn't really sleep any longer and decided to get up. I wasn't the first up, nor was I the last. But everyone managed to make it up by around 7:30 or so.

We interrupt this blog for a late-breaking observation: when it starts raining and it blows inside halfway across the room to where I'm sitting, it's time to close the windows.

So after having breakfast and everyone decided to get ready, about 9:00 we made our way out and back to the south side of the island (a trip we will likely be repeating several more times on this trip). We went to Diamond Head crater and made the 0.8-mile, up-560-feet hike to the top. Took some great pictures you can check out in the album here.

After Diamond Head a few of us went over to Waikiki for lunch and to wander around a bit, then eventually we all managed to make our way back up the island to the house. After regrouping, we headed over to the Polynesian Cultural Center for an evening luau and their night show. We all had a good time, ate good food, and the show was pretty good too.

Of course, I write these blogs in my head throughout the day, then completely forget about them by the time like now when I write them down. Seriously, there was some pretty funny stuff in my head at one point. Oh well, time to lock up and find some sleep. Tomorrow I've heard a plethora of different "what's happening" ideas, so we'll see what materializes.

Aloha from Hawaii - Day 1

It's about 7pm Hawaii time, which means 10pm for you folks on the west coast, and my goodness, 1am for anyone crazy enough to be reading this who lives on the east coast. Hey, I don't exactly know how far this blog reaches, every day I'm constantly amazed that people I never knew knew my blog existed were avid readers.


Anyway, it's been a long day. I left my house at 6:30am this morning to head to the airport (that's 3:30am Hawaii time). The flight was about 5 1/2 hours long, but overall went by pretty quickly. I had a bit of a headache building throughout the second half of the flight, due probably at least in some part to a lack of sufficient food, lack of sufficient sleep, or the complimentary mai-tai at the beginning of the flight after a lack of sufficient food and sleep. Whatever the case, the flight was done and all is well.


We collected the stuff and fetched rental cars. Annie and Adam got one rental car, and I got a car with Carley, Chad and baby Maija joining me. We made our way from the airport to Costco, though in a nod to primitive research, my car was the one that made it there without getting lost. :) After stocking up on food for the week, in an effort to save in the long run by not eating out much, we made our way along the coast up to Laie. The trip was all of about 30 miles, and of course took at least an hour to get there. But fortunately we're feeling the Aloha spirit now and not worrying too much.


As we pulled up to the rental house, flashbacks to the opening sequence of Magnum, PI. Though my red Chevy Impala does no justice to Tom Selleck's red Ferrari. Oh well, I'll get some pictures posted and you can see for yourself. This house is huge, I believe you could have one heck of a party here if you really wanted to. We'll suffice to hang out on our own and be lazy.


We stepped out the back door, out the gate in the back yard, and but a few white sand steps away was the ocean. Warm water, white (well mostly) sand beaches, who can argue with that? We grabbed a few boogie boards from the house and went down and played in the ocean. After I had had enough salt for one day, we made our way back to de-sandify before heading to the local grocery store to pick up those things we didn't need egregious Costco quantities of. In hindsight, we should have just picked up massive amounts at Costco, as we severely underestimated the inflated costs of groceries on the island vs the mainland. $9.00+ for a gallon of milk... enough said.


We're currently sitting around the dining table trying to figure out what to do tomorrow. It sounds like the current plan is to head down to Diamond Head, through Honolulu to Pearl Harbor, before making our way back up here for (probably) a luau at the Polynesian Cultural Center. The consensus is that we may be a bit overzealous in attempting to do everything on one day, and that we'll probably make a second trip down to Waikiki sometime later in the week.

We'll see how long we survive... I don't think any of us are motivated to immediately adjust to Hawaii time, but we'll see what happens. It's currently about 10 till 8 and we're all falling asleep. Just wait until we wake up at 5am... maybe...

Las Vegas

A bit of a lack in blogging, after I had appeared to be on quite a roll of the Olympics. Don't fear, there's still more to come there, but first a recap of my Vegas trip last weekend for Jonell and Chris' wedding.

Thursday morning, I had a 7AM flight to Vegas, but decided to try something different and fly down on Virgin America for the first time, rather than my typical Alaska. What a spectacular airline. Now, despite the fact that they don't have any non-stop flights between Seattle and Vegas and I had to transfer through San Francisco, the flight was great. Every seat has satellite television, so I was able to watch plenty of Olympics action throughout my entire flight. Quite comfortable, made the time go by quite nicely.

I met Andrew at the airport (his flight arrived just minutes before mine did), and we got our bags and took a taxi to the Venetian (where the wedding was, and where we were staying). As I was leaving SFO, the captain came on to let us know that "weather in Las Vegas is typical for this time of year, clear skies and a million degrees." Certainly correct on both accounts. As we stepped outside of the airport, it was about eleventy billion degrees, so hot that the real temperature doesn't really matter (can YOU tell the difference between 100F and 110F? I didn't think so.)

The wedding was on Friday afternoon, and was actually very quick and nice (about 10 minutes long) and the about 20 friends and family that were all there had a great time. For dinner that night there was a big dinner planned at B&B Ristorante in the Venetian, which is one of Mario Batali's restaurants. WOW. If that food wasn't some of the tastiest, most amazing Italian food I've ever had (sorry mom), I don't know what is. :) Dinner ended up being about a 3-hour event, after which a bunch of us went upstairs to digest and watch the Olympics.

Saturday night a few of us went to see The Beatles' LOVE by Cirque du Soleil show at the Mirage. I'd seen this show before, but none of the others had, and I certainly didn't mind seeing it again, despite the price. :) Again, an amazing show. We all had a good time, after which we went back to the Venetian and were gambling the night away. Andrew and I survived the longest, not making it back to the room until about 4:15am. But surprisingly, it didn't feel that late. Overall for the weekend I ended up rather than down, so that was a good victory considering my goal is always just to break even.

Came home on Sunday and back to work on Monday, though a bit tired catching up from the weekend. Now I can relax and watch the Olympics in the comfort of my own home! :)

Crazy Weekend

There will be a short and long part of this report. The short is my weekend report. I was down in San Jose, California for a summer curling bonspiel. Despite the fact that we won 1 and lost 3 games, we had a great time. One of the advantages to losing out early was that we had the whole day Sunday free to do what we wanted. We decided to drive down to Monterey, visited the aquarium (which for my avid blog readers, is on par with the excellence of the Tennessee Aquarium from my last trip), did some shopping down Cannery Row, and then drove down to Pebble Beach and checked out the golf courses and scenic drive.

Flash back to earlier in the day... I get a call from a family friend who has been looking after my parents' house while they were on vacation... their house was broken into. My parents were in Turkey, without any way to contact them until they got home today, and with me down in the Bay Area, I was fortunately able to get a hold of my sister eventually and she went down to help take care of things at the house.

After further assessment, these were decidedly amateur crooks. They broke a bedroom window to get in, after not being able to find an easy way in. They didn't really ransack the place like you'd typically expect... however, they stole some jewelry, silverware, two TVs and a laptop computer. Oh, and to top things off, they took my mom's minivan too (they probably needed something to haul away the stuff in). So after the police to wrote up the report, and CSI:FW processed the crime scene and got some nice fingerprints from the window, they cleaned up a bit of the mess around and the police put out a stolen vehicle alert on the car.

On to today... my parents got back and we told them about what happened. They made it home and took inventory of what was missing and worked on getting things back in order. The insurance folks will call tomorrow to take care of everything.

But wait, there's more! About 9:00pm, less than 30 hours after the incident was reported, they get a call from the FWPD: they've found the stolen van parked at the Denny's on 320th (all of about 3 minutes from my parents house) and asked them to come over to take a look. Apparently these crooks ARE as stupid as they seemed to be. After arriving, they found 3 or 4 police cars surrounding the parking lot and apparently they had two suspects in custody. Unfortunately, most of the loot was no longer in the van, but they suspect it's all close by. After some waiting around for CSI:FW to process the car and get any fingerprint evidence they could, they actually drove the car back home. The car seems to be in good shape, though apparently the police found a crack pipe among other things in the car, and recommended they get it professionally cleaned, which insurance should take care of. In the meantime, the police apparently have already recovered a few things (mainly jewelry-type stuff) off the suspects.

As of the last update, one suspect is in jail being interrogated, one suspect is at the hospital, probably handcuffed to the bedrail, after an untimely run in with one of Federal Way's four-legged finest in the FWPD K9 unit. It sounds as if justice may be served afterall.

Birmingham and Heading Home - Day 5 & 6

My last full day in Birmingham was pretty laid back. After just being lazy around the house all morning, hunger finally necessitated us actually getting up and heading out for the day.

We went to a small local restaurant "Paw Paw Patch"... self-described as "Country Cooking". Anything sterotypically southern is here for your culinary enjoyment. I had some mighty tasty fried chicken, along with expanding my horizons with some fried green tomatoes and creamed corn. The corn looked like it was being eaten for a second time, but was surprisingly tasty. The fried green tomatoes looked fried and tasty, but I could live without them. Andrew got some fried okra, which I tried and found to be decidedly meh. But Southern it definitely was.

We then went over to the Birmingham Zoo, and I took advantage of my nearly-expired membership to the Woodland Park Zoo, which basically gives me reciprocal free admission at nearly every zoo in the country. I saved about $13.50, which made it almost worth it to buy a membership. Nice zoo, nothing too amazing, but definitely had some nice areas and the different climate actually yields some animals you wouldn't see at Woodland Park.

After heading home for a quick break, we went to see a movie at the dollar theatre. Andrew still hadn't seen National Treasure 2, so I saw that again for the second time in 4 days. However, seeing it on something a bit larger than a 12" screen made a huge difference. It was still worth $1.

It is now Tuesday and time to head home after a much relaxing and eventful vacation. After a nice quick flight from Birmingham, I'm now sitting here eating lunch in Charlotte on about a two-hour layover. Sitting here eating my lunch of a bacon burger at the faux airport Chili's, it was a bit surprising to glance up at the televion and see the right honourable senator from the state of Washington, Maria Cantwell, on CNN. Of course, there is no audio, nor captions, other than the byline stating something to do with oil, and furthermore I'm no lip reader, which is good too because I just now realized that Cantwell doesn't really have any lips (other than the ones she seems to draw on her face).

Another hour or so until my flight leaves, in addition to all of my pictures from this trip I've posted online, I realized that I've got several groups of pictures spanning as far back as Emily and Nathan's wedding nearly a year ago that I still haven't posted and labeled. Perhaps most of these will make their way up shortly as well.

O'Hare is the next stop on my journey home, and I highly doubt they provide free internet like the fine hospitality of the south provides. On a side note, this being my first venture to the Charlotte airport, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend being stuck on a layover here. Bright and airy, with plenty of space to relax and not feel like you're stuck in an airport. Admittedly, that might change if you were here for 4 or 5 hours, but for a 2-hour layover it's quite nice.

Back on United for the final two legs of my trip. I'm expecting less than luxurious coach accomodations. I'm also slightly disconcerted that my flight out of Charlotte still has no gate number assigned with just over an hour until departure. Seems a bit odd, but probably nothing to worry about. Along with that, it's already estimated to arrive in Chicago 7 minutes ahead of schedule. Somehow I doubt that.

The voyage home continues...

Chattanooooga - Day 3 & 4

Day three had us heading off to Chattanooga, Tennessee for the night. It's only a little over 2 hours to drive up there, but we made a short detour along the way.

In the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama lives the place where you find all of the things you never knew you lost. The Unclaimed Baggage Center, home of everything you've ever left behind on an airplane, or in your lost luggage, or probably in the airport too. That's right, it all ends up in Alabama. What does that mean? Not a whole lot. In addition to the racks and racks of clothes, you'll find tons of iPods and every other iPod-like-device ever created. Sounds too good to be true? It is. Everything is priced pretty ridiculously, if you ask me. Sure you save a bit of money over what you'd pay for something brand new, but not that great of a deal, especially for an iPod that looks like it's been to Siberia and back (and probably has). On the gimmick scale, this place rates at 9 out of 10... don't waste your time.

After that brief stop, we continued on to Chattanooga. Getting there requires crossing briefly into Georgia, then up into Tennessee. For probably a hundred miles around, you see signs, billboards, and what seem to be trademark birdhouses all advertising...

"SEE ROCK CITY!"

Rock City is basically what it sounds like, a tourist trap at the top of Lookout Mountain, apparently named because you can look out from the top and see seven different states. I think that's a bit of a stretch, but whatever. You'll see plenty of Rock City in the photo album. It's actually pretty cool, but if it wasn't enough of a gimmick, its biggest draw... the brand new Starbucks across the street. Spare me.

We dropped down the mountain and into Chattanooga, found our hotel and checked in then went downtown to see what there was to do. It was pretty late in the evening so the main plan was to find dinner, but we figured out what was there. We found dinner and then eventually made our way back to the hotel.

On Sunday, we headed back downtown and went to the Tennessee Aquarium. Definitely one of the best aquariums I've ever been to, and the fact that it was raining off and on all day long made it good to be inside for a few hours. We had lunch and wandered around Chattanooga for a few hours before heading back down to Birmingham.

Had barbeque for dinner and then were lazy the rest of the day. Still feels like a vacation.

Monday is the last day before I leave Tuesday morning for another marathon of flights back to Seattle. Good times.

Birmingham - Day 2

Friday in Birmingham was a pretty eventful, yet relaxing day. I seem to still be living on Pacific time though, as I got up around 10am Central, which is about when I'd normally get up to go to work on a Friday.

Once we got up and ready to leave, it was uh, lunchtime. :) So we made way for my most fitting start to the trip, Chick-Fil-A. I love me my Chick-Fil-A. Delicious, if not more delicious than normal. After lunch we drove a bit around the more scenic parts of Birmingham (and let me tell you, the scenic parts are few and far between.) We made it to the Southern Museum of Flight, aptly located over by the airport. For anyone who's been to Boeing's Museum of Flight in Seattle, this obviously pales in comparison, but is remarkably impressive. They had lots of older planes, especially military planes. Very nice museum.

After that we did more wandering around Birmingham, before ending up at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Big gardens with lots of trails up through trees and such. It was pretty fun (lots of pictures to be seen in the photo album). After a rousing game of "name that herb!" we headed back home and made pizza for dinner.

After dinner we went over to the Birmingham Race Track. Now I've been to plenty of horse race tracks, but this was my first greyhound racing track. It was... decidedly different. Dispense with the pageantry of horse racing, it looks like someone came up with this in their backyard one day. Furthermore, far more luck is involved in choosing the winning dogs. If there was any element of skill involved, it completely escaped me. It was interesting though.

We came home and it was time to go to bed, though we promptly didn't go to bed for another 2 hours. But that's typical. Hey, I'm still on Pacific time. Today we're heading up to Chattanooga for a couple of days, with plans to make a few bizarre stops along the way. As usual, it should be fun!

It took me only one day to feel like I was actually on vacation. Perhaps I really did need a vacation more than I thought I did.

Planes, Planes, and more Planes - Day 1

Who would have thought taking 3 flights zigzagging across the country in the same day would be tiring? Oh, yeah, everyone. That's OK, it wasn't so bad actually, but there were some adventures.

It began with a relatively uneventful flight down to San Francisco. After being loaded into the cattle-car known as United, we made our way down in a relatively quick hour and a half (well, in the air at least). In fact, we got there so early, there was still a plane waiting at our gate to leave, so we proceeded to sit on the taxiway for about 15 minutes, negating any resemblance of being early.

Of course, I was switching to US Airways for the remaining two legs of my trip, which flies out of the complete opposite end of the airport. So out from my gate I go, walk all the way to the center of the terminal, leave security, wait for their train, and take the train to the terminal at the opposite end of the airport.

After waiting in line again to go through security. Of course, once I make it to the almighty x-ray machines, I get pulled aside. "Can we look in your bag, sir?" Of course they can, what do I have to hide? Oh yeah, that completely unopened bottle of water I bought past security at Sea-Tac figuring I wouldn't have to go through security again. "Yes, TSA goons, you can take it." I still don't see the point of liquids causing any sort of security hazard, but I suppose it's all for the safety or our country, blah blah blah. I'll take my chances.

So I make it through security, and continue to walk all the way to basically the end of the terminal, where just as I arrive at the gate it's time to board. So much for grabbing lunch, I guess I'll just get on the plane.

Five hours on the flight to Charlotte. Fortunately the US Air planes are a bit more spacious than United, so it was pretty comfortable. The time passed by pretty fast. There were what I considered an abnormally large number of kids on the flight, running up and down the aisles at times, but they were pretty well behaved, even though the flight attendants had to get them to stay out of the way a few times. The in-flight movie was actually good, and one I hadn't seen, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. I have to admit, even though I was watching the movie on a 8-inch screen from 10 feet away, I think it was better than the first National Treasure, which I also enjoyed. The rest of the flight was relatively uneventful until during the second round of beverage service an entire bloody mary was spilled by the flight attendant on the rows right in front of me. First of all, the smell was just, uh, great. I felt bad for the one guy who had it spilled basically down his back. At some point, if it were me who got spilled on, I would have just completely started laughing. But that flight ended fine and all was well.

Spent a few hours in the Charlotte airport. Down-home Southern Hospitality at its finest. The restrooms all have attendants, and the terminals all have rocking chairs. Fortunately I had some extra time to relax and get some dinner (which was the only thing substantial I had eaten all day), then walked all the way out to the end of the airport to catch my plane to Birmingham.

The Birmingham flight was quick and smooth. The only funny part was the uncanny resemblance of the flight attendant to Mythbuster Kari Byron, but back in her shorter-hair years. She was equally as quirky and funny too. Made for a very entertaining flight.

After 12 hours in transit I finally made it to Birmingham. Andrew picked me up and after checking out his new(er) place, it was time to go to bed. I think today will require a trip to Chick-Fil-A for lunch... because that will make me happy.

Vacation is nice. No pictures yet, but I'll be sure to take the camera out today and get some shots of the scenic world that is Alabama. More to come...

Another update...

Curling season is finally over. After a weekend where I curled at 2pm and 2am on Saturday night/Sunday morning, it's a good time to take a 6-month break from throwing rocks at houses. Another fun, yet surprisingly long season. I think the added complications of buying a house and moving in the middle of the season made it feel much longer than it really was. But on the bright side, I now have a much more relaxing summer lined up. The season was a resounding success, with my defending-champion Friday night team coming in a resounding 2nd place, yet my Thursday and Monday teams firmly in the "also ran" category.

In two weeks I'll be heading down to the South to visit Andrew. It's been nearly 2 years since I went down there, whereas he's been up to visit all of us in Seattle about 3 or 4 times (or maybe more, I've lost count). I'll be celebrating Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama, which will probably be a non-event down there, but at least interesting. Of course, in my constant frugality, I saved money by building the most convoluded flight itinerary down and back. I'll be leaving Thursday morning and fly to San Francisco, then to Charlotte NC, then to Birmingham. On the following Tuesday I'll go from Birmingham, to Charlotte, to Chicago, and finally home to Seattle. About 6000 miles criss-crossing the country for the low, low price of just $235. I don't mind too much... at least that's what I say now. :)

Work is going well. My new commute averages about 25 minutes, which is probably about the top of my tolerance zone, but acceptable. I think I'll enjoy the commute a bit during the summer when I can enjoy the nice weather while I'm driving home. The only part I don't enjoy is that I'm filling up the gas tank much more frequently now... add in the occasional drive down to visit the parents and it's even worse. But at this point, given the state of the bus system here that would add another 30-45 minutes each way to my commute, the time and flexibility of driving is more valuable to me. They really need to expand the light rail, even if it'll be 10 years for them to finish it. That's what I say.

Now I just need to figure out what new and fun things to do during the summer. Perhaps another attempt to get motivated to improve my golfing skills is in order. I need to actually get myself over to the driving range more often, just to remind myself how dismal my skills are. Or maybe something else is in order. We'll see.

Aloha Huskies

As expected (at least by me, considering the rest of the season) the Huskies lost. I was prepared for this, and don't mind losing when you're outplayed, but when you get screwed by bad calls, I am less pleased.

But that's the short of the story, the rest of the story begins now...

We met up with about 20 of Amy's friends in 6 cars in the parking lot of an old Costco near Aloha Stadium to carpool over to the stadium for tailgating around 6 hours before the game started. Tailgating is hard work. Fortunately, they were all fully prepared with plenty of food and drink and it was a good time. Once we finally got situated in the stadium parking lot, it was more like 4 hours to game time, which wasn't so bad. I was pretty impressed with the Hawaii tailgaters, though I must admit it was a bit of a step below the supreme tailgating that the fans at Husky Stadium provide every week.

Fast forward to game time, we made our way into the stadium and found our seats. I had gotten my tickets through the UW so had pretty good seats in the 3rd row in the upper deck right on the goal line, though most of Amy's friends had tickets in various sections in the lower deck of the end zone. I must say, it was a refreshing change to actually see the game from above, it was amazing how much you can actually see the plays and what's happening. I've become so used to watching games from the bottom 10 rows or so of every stadium, which usually involves watching the games on the big screen, rather than the actual players on the field. The nice thing was that Aloha Stadium only holds 50,000, and the upper deck isn't nearly as high as, say, Husky Stadium, so our seats were remarkably close to the field and easy to see what was going on. Added advantage was the overhang over the upper deck, which just stretched to about the 2nd row. Thank goodness for that, as at the end of the first half the skies opened up with a brief downpour, which we observed from our safe and dry seats.

The game itself needs no further commentary. After an exciting and promising 21-0 first quarter score, things made their way back downhill and the referees failed to be of any assistance (at least not to the Dawgs).

After the game we went to a local sports bar back near Waikiki and got some food before everyone basically was falling asleep and headed back home. I think I made it to bed by somewhere close to 2am, and managed to sleep until about 11:30am.

Sunday was a bit more relaxed, as I decided to go off on my own and do some sightseeing and drove up Tantalus Drive as high as I could go above Honolulu. There'll be some pictures sooner or later when I get them posted. I also walked down to the beach and wandered around Waikiki, though wasn't too impressed with it all. It was still nice, when I wasn't caught in the occasional downpour.

Tonight for dinner, about 10 of us went to a Japanese-style barbeque where you cook your own food at the table and such. It was pretty fun, though I must say a bit of a novelty and far too much work just to eat. :) However, it was darn tasty.

After that the real excitement happened as we went to a local karaoke bar. It is times like this when my sister makes me proud. So this bar is obviously a hangout for the locals, and Amy decides that she's going to win them over by singing a Hawaiian song. She proceeds to sing (very well, I might add) some Hawaiian favorite, and indeed wins over the crows with quite a glowing response. It is at this point she screams out a "Go Huskies!" immediately negating everything she had just achieved. She was instantly booed and heckled. That's my sister. It took her at least another half hour to work over the locals and convince them she wasn't so bad. :) She did a good job, but all of us wouldn't let her off the hook as easily as they did. It was a classic moment.

I proceeded to be the designated driver for three inebriated and loud fools, one of whom was my sister, back to the hotel, where they wandered over next door to continue celebrating the last night here. I had had enough and now am here relaxing and catching up on some blogging. Tomorrow we head home... and it's about time to leave the world of vacation, but I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to return to the real world of work. More on that later.

Aloha

I guess I should blog a bit on my current vacation to Hawaii. For those not privy to the story, I'm down here for the UW vs. Hawaii football game that will take place tomorrow evening. I took advantage of Alaska Airlines's introductory fares a few months back when they started new service to Honolulu from Seattle... for a little over $200 round trip, it's hard to say no.

Thursday morning we went to the airport to fly to Hawaii. I must say, I was surprised how many Dawg fans were at the airport. Apparently the lack of any bowl games the past few years has a lot of the die-hard fans ready to take anything they can get, even if it's an end-of-season game against Hawaii. We had probably at least 20 on our flight who were "obviously" going to the game, and probably others who weren't so apparent.

The flight was rather uneventful. I guess it went by pretty fast, but I wasn't the most comfortable, and started to get a bit of a headache by the end of the flight which didn't help matters. The plane was very nice and new (probably one of the newest Alaska Airlines planes I've ever flown on), but still was just a single-aisle 3-by-3 plane, that doesn't really scream "sure, take a 6 hour flight in this aluminum tube". Either way, it wasn't so bad.

We made our way to Honolulu, and as I stepped off the plane, didn't notice the heat so much as the humidity. Temperatures were probably in the low 80's, but humidity about 80%... suprisingly tolerable. I've determined that humidity is fine, as long as it isn't accompanied by blazing high heat. We got the rental car and headed to the hotel in Waikiki.

We were all hungry (myself, my sister and her friend), and were wanting some food. I figured we could just go to the hotel and then find something from there, but Amy insisted on finding a Zippy's and getting "real" food. After winding through the tangles of streets that they call Honolulu, we finally got to it and had food. Food good. I approve.

After making it to the hotel, the rest of Thursday was pretty uneventful, besides the obligatory post-flight nap time. Our hotel, the Aqua Waikiki Wave, is not glamorous, but it's big and right in the middle of everything. It's right behind the International Marketplace, and well located to just about anything you could ever want. We explored a bit, before we went to dinner with some of Amy's friends at Angelo Pietros, what I would describe as the closest thing you can get to an Asian Italian restaurant. It was mainly pizza and pasta, though the pasta definitely had an Asian flair to it, rather than being strictly Italian. I had spaghetti with clams, and it was, however, very good eats. After that Amy's Hawaiian friends all started showing up in droves as we spent a few hours at Senor Frogs. (Well, *they* spent a few more hours than I did, but that's besides the point. Fortunately it's only 3 blocks from our hotel, and I could just walk back when I got sick of them all. :))

Friday morning, Amy slept, as expected. I got up and drove out to the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. I'd been there the last time I was in Hawaii, which was nearly 15 years ago, and wanted to check it out again. It hasn't changed much in 15 years. In fact, I decided not to wait the hour delay before I could take the boat out to the memorial, and decided to just head back. I stopped at Hilo Hatties for my fix of random Hawaiian junk and souveniers before swinging back by the hotel to pick up Amy who was finally up and ready to go. We got lunch at Bubba Gump's at the Ala Moana mall... I had probably some of the best fish and chips (mahi mahi) I have ever had. Food good. I still approve. We then went back to the hotel to rest for a few hours, and eventually get ready for the evening's dinner and festivities.

Long background story shortened to a few sentences... my sister Amy got really involved with the Hawaiian crowd when she was at the UW, so she has about 20 friends from Hawaii, half of which have since graduating moved back to the islands. This UW/Hawaii football game has sort of become a UW reunion for a lot of them, so it's been pretty well planned full of group events. Not a bad thing, I get to tag along and enjoy it. I actually have met most all of her friends before at various times in the past, though don't ask me to match faces to names for most of them. :)

So we went to this dinner that they had organized at the Natsunoya Tea House, which is apparently a long-standing institution in Honolulu, for a full Japanese dinner with tons of tasty food. There were 22 of us having this full family-style feast. It was tasty... mostly. :) More good food. Yet again, I approve.

Closing the evening was planned karaoke. I disapprove. I wasn't going to go, but I did for a bit. It was painful... painfully boring. Is it just me who does not understand the appeal of karaoke in the slightest. I don't really want to hear people sing bad versions of good songs. I think it would have been more fun if it were my friends, rather than 20 of Amy's friends, most of whom I don't know very well. I made the most of it for an hour or so, before leaving to head back to the hotel. Fortunately with enough of her friends, Amy can get a ride back on her own.

Waikiki is abuzz tonight, as I attempted to park in this micro-sized hotel parking garage which was completely full. I had to park in the garage on the next street over, which was sufficiently a pain in the neck, and about 20 minutes that really started to make me grumpy at 12:00am when I just want to get back to my hotel room and relax and sleep. But I finally made it back, found time to blog a bit, and now it's time for bed. This vacation is going to seriously mess with my internal clock, I say.

Tomorrow is the big game, much pre-game tailgating is planned, so it should be good times. But I should be awake for that, and that won't happen unless I sleep now. More tomorrow.

I am a blogging slacker!

You know how it is when you get out of the habit of doing something, you tend to forget about it completely. Yes, such is my blog. When I'm not on vacation, I tend not to remember to put anything interesting here. BUT... today I shall change that. Today is the first day of the rest of my blog. Or something.

Did you notice how in that entire first paragraph, I had a lot of words and almost zero information. That's space filler, folks. Now for a barrage of updates:

• Since I never really wrapped up my last vacation blog... yes, I made it home from Upstate New York. I posted the last few pictures I had previously forgotten to upload. Really nothing other than some long plane riding adventures complete the trip blog, and I actually do have one final blog entry that I scribbled down on a piece of paper while sitting on the plane on the way home. I'll probably get that posted in the next couple of days.
• Speaking of vacation, while posting the last of my vacation pictures, I also threw in some pictures from work I took one day when I happened to have my camera. Not too enthralling, but if you've ever wondered where I spend at least 40-hours a week, that can serve as a little glimpse into my world. Also on the topic of pictures, I still have a slew of pictures from Emily and Nathan's wedding in Yakima that I have yet to post. Maybe by their first anniversary I'll get around to that. Hmmm.
• Speaking of weddings, yet another wedding in the "Year of a Million Weddings" continues this weekend with Cat and Aaron's wedding. Fortunately, this is one of the few that don't require me travelling long distances to go to. And this time, lots of people will be in town this weekend for the festivities. Plus, on Friday night myself and a bunch of friends are going to the Seattle Symphony for their Sci-Fi Concert featuring music as expected, plus a laser light show (in Benaroya Hall, that should prove interesting) and narration by none other than George Takei, whom I last saw at a Husky halftime show riding around in a cardboard USS Enterprise that made me fear for his safety. Hmmm... should be interesting.
• Speaking of football, another season of Husky Football is once again upon us. After a 2-0 start to the season, the Dawgs had a sloppy game against Ohio State to come back to 2-1. Though overall, I'm not too disappointed about the game. We still look far better than any team that's taken the field the past several years, and good potential for a decent season.
• Speaking of a decent season, another year of curling is fast approaching. That chilly pasttime that seems to consume at least 3-nights a week, 6-months out of my year, is back again. This will be my 3rd year of throwing rocks at houses, plus to add to the mayhem, I agreed to take over as the league manager for the Friday night league. That should actually be more fun than not, though of course, yet another thing to add to my plate of things to do.
• Speaking of things to do, next weekend (after this one) I'm heading down to Disneyland for the weekend. I'm trying to squeeze out a bit of extra mileage out of my Annual Pass I got last October, and found next weekend to be the best time to do it. Not sure who else may show up as well... Amy may go down if she "has nothing better to do," and Heather may drive down from Encino to hang out with me for one of the days. But of course, it'll be fun no matter what. It's actually often easier to get around by myself, when all is said and done. :)
• Speaking of being done, I think that's the last of my updates for now.

Lakes and Falls

Saturday brought about a good day to drive around and see part of the scenery around Rochester. We drove up to Sea Breeze, NY, which as the name might imply (and might not, for that matter) is right on Irondequoit Bay up on Lake Ontario. We did some letterboxing in a park nearby and then continued around to see (a very small part) of Lake Ontario.


Then we went to the DCA Drum Corps World Championships, right down the street at Paetec Park in Rochester. The DCA is apparently the level below the self-proclaimed "major league of drum corps" which is DCI. But it was fun to go watch. We heard some good bands, and saw some good performances.

Sunday we headed over to Buffalo and then up to Niagra Falls. The falls were spectacular. The funny part to me is how the American side of the falls is a state park, with lots of green landscape and trees, whereas the Canadian side of the falls is mass commercialization. We started at the Horseshoe falls on the U.S. side and proceeded to walk all the way around through the crowded Labor Day Weekend masses, to the American Falls, and over the bridge to Canada. Most of the pictures you see of the falls are all taken of the American Falls from the Canadian side. But once you cross into Canada you feel like you've walked onto the Las Vegas strip, with wall-to-wall stores, Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood, wax museum, well, every other tourist trap attraction you could imagine. Nice to see capitalism is alive and well in Canada. We walked past most of that and walked up the Canadian side of the river, then turned around and headed back where we came from. Noticing the final insult, a 50-cent toll to leave Canada and get back into the U.S., we made our way back and after spending about 4 hours exploring the falls, headed back home.

A note of warning to those viewing my online photo album: there are about 3 dozen pictures of Niagra falls, from all different angles. No, I don't expect anyone to think half of the pictures are any different from the other half of them, but hey, some turned out better than others, why be picky? :)

Monday was Labor Day, though having a holiday in the middle of a vacation doesn't really feel much different than anything else. Today we went to a minor league baseball game between the Rochester Red Wings (AAA-Minnesota) and the Buffalo Bisons (AAA-Cleveland) in Rochester. Yes, that's bisonS with an S on the end... apparently rules of plurality don't matter when it's a sports team. It was a fun game to go to, about 10,000 fans showed up for the final game of the season, where neither team had any chance of making it to the playoffs, but the home team Red Wings were victorious 8-5.

After we returned we had dinner with some friends of the Gingras' from their church. And now it's time to wind down and get things ready to head home tomorrow night. It's been a nice vacation, but it's about time to head home, me thinks. Hopefully my airport adventures aren't too adventurous either.

Rochester to Syracuse

The day started with what you're supposed to do on vacation, sleep until you can't sleep any more. So that's what we all did. Once we got up in the morning, er, afternoon, Andrew and I headed over to the George Eastman House. As the name implies, it was Eastman's mansion he built in Rochester with all his money he made from the Kodak company. A slightly eccentric, slightly insane person, if you ask me, he had lots of pretty crazy ideas. But he also was a big fan of music and, well, photography obviously. His mansion, however, was like walking though a real life game of Clue. Every time I went into a room, I half expected to see a dead body on the floor. Fortunately, we did not find any. Nor did we find any secret passages, which I have to say was quite a disappointment. There was also a special exhibit of Ansel Adams photography. While some of that was interesting, I have to say that of all art forms, photography is probably the least thrilling to me. But it was still an interesting place to visit.

After that we walked back to Andrew's parents place, and got ready to head out to Syracuse for the football game. It took a good 2 hours to get out there, both with the traffic, waiting at the I-90 toll booths (yes, it seems wrong to me too), and passing by the New York State Fair which was going on just outside of Syracuse. We made it through the sea of orange everywhere and pulled into a parking garage, we made our way up towards the Carrier Dome, walking past the Sheraton where the UW Warm-Up party was. The band had just played and was hanging out on the lawn just past so we stopped and said hi to the few remaining people we knew, as well as Brad and the crew. We made our way across the Syracuse campus, which is actually quite a nice campus, and over to the Carrier Dome for the game.

The Carrier Dome reminds me of the Kingdome, in as much as it's a big, round, cement monstrosity with a domed roof. OK, so not quite as big, but still a monstrosity. But we found our seats, near the back of the UW section, just behind and to the side of the UW Band. The game was quite an adventure, but a rousing success with a 42-12 UW victory. Looks like some good potential for the UW season, now we'll just have to see how we do against Boise State and Ohio State in the next two weeks. Some of the non-game highlights were watching the Syracuse fans filter out and become virtually non-existant by the time the game was over. Before the game started, the Husky legend, the Dawgfather himself, Don James, comes and takes his seat in the UW section, as thunderous applause comes from the rest of the Husky fans in attendance. Though apparently, Real Dawgs Wear Yellow, as DJ decided to wear a canary yellow polo. :) I guess he can wear whatever he wants.

The band made quite a post-game performance to a vastly empty Carrier Dome, as the UW fans started to filter out. Syracuse's band wasn't much to be impressed by, at least by Husky Band standards. Though Syracuse band members seemed to enjoy the Husky Band's post-game performance too, as they watched on.

After the game, it was another 2-hours or so getting back to Rochester, with a late night stop at McDonalds for some much needed food. Then much sleep ensued. All in all, a highly successful day of vacation.

Time to Play!

Today I am fully adjusted to East Coast time. Woke up around 8am, and after lazing around all morning long figuring out what we wanted to do, Andrew and I went over to Rochester's own Strong National Museum of Play. That's right, of play. It's not exactly a full-fledged children's museum, but it's mostly a place where parents with children would go. Fortunately, Andrew and I like to play nearly as much as little kids do, so we fit right in.

Words can't exactly do the place justice, so I'll refer you to my photo archives for a detailed trip report. But some of the highlights included:

• Sesame Street - a reasonably accurate replica of Sesame Street itself, complete with lots of interesting history and facts about the show, and of course hands on fun for the kids.
• National Toy Hall of Fame - some of the finest collections of classic toys and games you'll ever find. We had fun walking a Slinky down the stairs, as well as building some fine Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys stuff along the way. Fun stuff.

After spending close to 4 hours at the museum, we left and came back home. The rest of the evening was pretty laid back, relaxing and pretending we're on vacation. Sometimes vacations can just be relaxing.

Tomorrow we will eventually head over to Syracuse for the big game. Game starts at 8pm Eastern, so it will be a late night getting home. Hopefully a victory for the Dawgs, but then an hour and a half drive back, will be nothing short of a late night arrival back in Rochester. Saturday should be a somewhat recovery day before we head up to Niagra Falls on Sunday.

Until then... Go Dawgs!

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Yes, that's a complete grammatically correct sentence, and a fitting start to my Upstate New York trip blog.

It was the best of flights, it was the worst of flights. It all began with a red-eye flight out of Seattle on Tuesday night. My $200 roundtrip flight to Buffalo, NY makes up for the fact that it was a) a red-eye, b) Seattle - Buffalo, with a 3-hour early-morning layover in Atlanta, and c) AirTran Airlines. All things considered, it worked out pretty well. My flight left on time, if not a bit early at 9:45pm on Tuesday night, and it was a pretty peaceful flight, on which I sat in the exit row next to the window. This has its advantages, and its disadvantages. I had plenty of leg room, so could easily stretch out and not feel squished in like sardines. However... being next to the window exit, way up in the sky it was surprisingly cold. Which was fine until you leaned against the side of the airplane, and nearly froze your leg off. Either way, after arriving in Atlanta a full 30+ minutes early (not exactly an advantage when you already have a scheduled 3-hour layover), I wandered around the surprisingly busy airport at 5:30am, found myself some early morning Chick-Fil-A breakfast, and pretended I wasn't really still awake at 3am Pacific Time.

Truth be told... I was really still awake at 3am Pacific Time... and 4am... and 5am, when finally my flight from Atlanta to Buffalo left. As I boarded the plane and made my way back to my seat in 18A, a little boy was sitting in my seat next to his mom. She asked if she could trade seats with me so she could sit next to her son. I was happy to help, and she gave me her seat in 1C, at the very front of the plane in "Business Class". Honestly, I would have probably traded seats with her regardless of where her seat was, but this was just icing on the cake.

Now, AirTran's "Business Class" is nothing to be too excited about. The seats are larger and have a bit more leg room (though probably no more leg room than my exit row seat did on the previous flight), and you get free booze. Well, that's great, but at 8am EDT, or 5am PDT, I was not really there to take advantage of the free alcohol. I did, however, sleep almost the entire 1.5 hour flight to Buffalo.

All in, I probably slept about 3.5 hours over the course of the night. I made it to Buffalo, and Andrew, who had coordinated his flight from Birmingham to arrive nearly the same time as mine, arrived shortly after, and his mom had come to pick us up from the airport.

We drove back to Rochester, though I saw no winged buffalo along the way, and then spent the day exploring around Rochester, and going grocery shopping. Normally grocery shopping isn't too noteworthy, but we went to Wegman's. Now, Wegman's is a chain of grocery stores that started in Rochester, but now has stores as far south as Virginia, and is often ranked the best supermarket chain in the US. We went to the Cadillac of Wegman's, their flagship store. This place is like a Costco-sized Whole Foods, only not quite as creepy as either. I took a handful of pictures, before they threw me out of the store for taking pictures. OK, I didn't quite get thrown out, but they man at the Cheeses of the World counter told me I couldn't take pictures in the store. I still never understand why some stores have those silly policies, but I guess whatever makes them happy.

Back to the house we came. Now, the best way I can describe this house is if you've ever seen a classic brick rowhouse somewhere in New England, with all its old-world charm and style, like you'd see on an episode of This Old House, but before it gets renovated. :) This specific 3-story house has been turned over the years into a 3-unit building, with Andrew's parents currently residing on the first floor. It's actually a pretty nice place, though Norm Abram and Bob Vila could turn this place into a palace, if they really wanted to.

After dinner, my lack of sleep from my travels caught up with me, and off to bed I went. More days of vacation to come.

Update, Vegas, and More

It's been a rather busy past two weeks, which requires a bit of an uber-update. This update is brought to you by Google Calendar... the only way to remember what I did the past two weeks.

West Side Story

Went and saw West Side Story at the 5th Avenue Theatre last Tuesday. As expected, an outstanding show which was worth of its own entire writeup, but I was a slacker. Few people don't know at least one song from the show, and hearing it all live was quite the exciting experience. I had very little to complain about, and much to praise. The original Jerome Robbins choreography was performed with oustanding athleticism and skill. What can I say?

Music - 5 stars, with an outstanding full orchestra to boot!
Cast - 4 stars, some great performances by some great actors.
Technical - 4 stars.
Overall - 4 stars. Nothing to complain about, but it wasn't quite as polished as you'd expect from a major Broadway production. That's not to say it's not worth seeing, even more than once.

Las Vegas

In what seems to have informally become an annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas with my Dad, this year my sister decided to come along too which was fun. In my many Vegas vacations, I've determined that 3 nights is too long, which is why I opted for 2 nights this time, which decidedly was an excellent plan. However, the adventure began somewhat slowly with the plane out of Seattle boarding about 40 minutes before the scheduled departure, only to depart 1 hour behind schedule. You do the math. It seemed everything was working against us. First the original pilot apparently became seriously ill, and the replacement was stuck on a ferry trying to get to the airport. He arrived shortly thereafter. Then during the pre-flight checks, they found--and don't miss the direct quote here--that "the plane came straight out of the hangar, but they forgot to change the blue water" that is used in the toilet system, and thus we had to wait while they serviced that. FINALLY we were ready to go, and the man on the push tug that backs the plane up had a broken headset so had to get a replacement before he could push the plane out. Something was working against us, but we finally got out and off to the desert.

Amy and I decided we wanted to go see The Beatles' LOVE, one of the newest Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas, and bought a ticket for Dad for Father's Day. On Sunday night we went and saw the show, and it was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I've seen one other Cirque show over 10 years ago, Mystere, which was the first show in Vegas to feature that crazy Canadian acrobatic troupe. Much of the same bizarre antics were seen in LOVE, everything from bouncing off trampolines, dangling from ropes, and countless other amazing things that make you even more impressed once you realize that those spinning things dangling from the ceiling are actually people. LOVE is unique in that it feature zero live music. The entire soundtrack was developed from original Beatles master tapes and assembled specifically for the show. The advantage here is that you know most of the songs right off the bat, unless you've been living under the rock of pop culture for the past several decades. The creative visual interpretations of the music in the show would be exciting whether you're a Beatles fan or not, but even more so if you like the music. As most shows in Vegas go, it's worth every penny, though it'll cost you a whole lot of them to see it. I'd absolutely see it again.

As for the rest of the vacation, it was a good time. As usual, I redistributed money within Vegas by winning from the rich and losing to the richer. Not very Robin Hood-like, but tis better than losing to everyone. :) But on the other hand, I'll be heading back to work tomorrow... no life-changing jackpots for me... but having a nice relaxing vacation was more than sufficient.

Now back to the daily grind. And I've spent too long writing this, and it's time to sleep. :)

Alaska Airlines - New Hawaii Service

Alaska Airlines announced new non-stop service from SEA-HNL and SEA-LIH (Lihue, Kauai)starting in October. First of all, for anyone from Seattle who likes to travel to Hawaii, this is a great deal.

More importantly, they've released introductory fares for the routes. SEA-HNL service starts October 12th with Mon-Thurs fares at $236.30 Round Trip after all taxes. What a steal!

Anyone who knows me knows I'm less than enthusiastic about Hawaii... but more enthusiastic about a huge fare sale. I've decided to go down for the UW/Hawaii football game on December 1st this year, leaving Thursday returning Monday. Can't beat that.

April Update

Seeing it's the 25th of April and I have yet to make a post since March 31st, we'll call this the April update, and I will endeavor to give a whirlwind tour of the month so far.

I made it back safe and sound from the bonspiel in New Jersey. (Pictures are up in my photo album.) The trip was a lot of fun, but always nice to get home from far away. Being my first trip to the East Coast (besides Florida, which everyone agrees does not count), it was quite a bit of fun. I need to go back to NYC sometime soon.

Curling wrapped up another year of fun and excitement. I curled in three different leagues this year, and my respective teams did reasonably well in all three of them. My Sunday night team was runner-up in the B division, which was a victory considering how bad we did the first half of the season. My Thursday night team won the C division, and my Friday night team won the A division. [A note about the divisions: the general pattern for curling leagues are that at the beginning of the season, teams are randomly assigned into pools and play teams in their own pool. Half way through the season, for a two-division league anyway, the teams in the top half of each pool are put into the A division, and the bottom-half of each pool become the B division. That way in the second half, theoretically you're playing teams that more closely match your skill level. Still, winning the B division is vastly preferred to, say, coming in 5th in the A division. :)]

Now that curling is done, I'm finding myself with quite a bit of spare time on my hands... which is both nice and not. It gets a bit boring sitting at home all the time, so I have to find other things to do. My current goal is to go to the driving range at least once a week and get my golf skills a step-up from deplorable to respectable. :)

I've had such a terrible track record seeing movies I want to see. I think I'm going to get NetFlix for a few months and catch up on my movie watching. For the past, oh, 2 years or so I've consistently had movies that I've seen previews for and been "I want to see that", but never did. And considering I NEVER seem to go rent movies, I think having NetFlix will convince me to actually watch them occasionally and catch up seeing movies I've wanted to. The big challenge will be setting up my queue and trying to remember all the movies I've wanted to see. We'll try it for a month or so and see how it works out.

Last week I went and saw The Light in the Piazza at the Paramount. This will be an abbreviated review, which is probably what the show deserved. I think this show is hit-or-miss as far as the audience goes... and I think it had its fair share of misses. I've determined there are really three distinct audiences for the theatre... first, people who see theatre as an art form, meant to inspire, intrigue, and promote intellectual discussion on a social commentary of the world. Second, people who want to be entertained, whether in comedy, music, lavish scenery, fantasy reality, or any combination of those. And third, people who have such low standards they would give Rachael Ray microwaving a hot pocket a standing ovation.

I definitely fall firmly into the second category, but if the show crosses-over to cover both the first and second categories, I'm just as satisfied. I don't mind the occasional inspiration, but I definitely want to be entertained or awed by a show. I WANT to be humming a tune for a week after the show. The Light in the Piazza missed the mark with a lot of the audiences. While the show loosely may have inspired or intrigued someone, I don't think that's what it was trying to do, and if it was it failed miserably. I sat next to an older lady who came in by herself, and not to stereotype, but appeared definitely to be in the first category of audience I described. About halfway through the first act I looked over and she appeared to be in the most excrutiating agony and/or half asleep. She did not return for the second act. The music was very operatic in nature, which in turn made it difficult to understand a lot of the words during the songs, as well as just wasn't toe-tapping or hummable music. I think it missed the #1 or #2 audience hits, but there are plenty of #3 audience types who were on their feet at the end as usual.

As for my ratings:

Cast - 4 stars. My lackluster satisfaction with the show was, as usual, no discredit to the actors. Outstanding cast, and well performed.
Script - 3 stars. An interesting story, though nothing spectacular.
Music - 2 stars. The music wasn't bad, but did nothing for me. What would have been a good play without music was just muddled up with added music.
Technical - 3 stars. Not much more to say about that.
Overall - 3 stars. Probably more like 2.5 stars, but I'll round up in this case. I've seen it, it was worth seeing once, but I don't need to see it again in the future.

With that review out of the way, I'm caught up to this week. Not too much going on at all. I should get back to work, then figure out what to do with the rest of my day.

Adventures in New Jersey

Our first night of curling was, shall we say, less than stellar. We lost in spectacular fashion, no doubt attributed to our incredibly poor team play. Our second game wasn't until Friday night, so during the day on Friday we took the opportunity to explore New Jersey. One of the other people I came down here with has some friends who live in Western New Jersey so we went out and visited them. We ate lunch in the nice little town of Clinton, NJ. I took quite a few pictures of the adventure, and once those get up it will be a bit more interesting.

Eventually we made it back and played our second game, which we played far better than the first game, but ultimately came up short in the last end. After two losses, it was time to win. So today (Saturday) at noonish we played our third game which we played spectacularly well and won. Now we're relaxing back at the hotel before we go back to play our next game at 6:45pm. Tonight is also the big pig roast, vegetarians need not apply. This annual event we're playing in is called the Plainfield BonSqueal, the highlight of which is the pig roast feast on Saturday night. I must say, it's starting to smell mighty tasty outside the curling club now.

Last night on the east coast, then back home Sunday evening. Just when I've finally gotten adjusted to Eastern time, I'll have to shift 3 hours back again. Monday's going to be one great day at work.

Whirlwind tour of NYC

After spending Wednesday travelling on what felt like a relatively short 5-hour flight direct from Seattle to Newark, today we don't have our first curling match until 9:30pm or so. So we ventured into the Big Apple for a whirlwind touristy tour of NYC.

We headed over to the Edison, NJ train station and took the train into the city. About 45 minutes later we arrived at Penn Station in New York City. Really, we had very few actual plans for our day, deciding rather to just go with the flow and see what we find. This worked out well, until we decided to actually try to find specific things and were thwarted at every turn. :)

From Penn Station we ventured north, past Macy's and on up to Times Square--not as thrilling as it looks on TV. After we saw what we needed there, we continued on up to Rockefeller Center and decided to take the tour up to the observation deck at the Top of the Rock. From there we had a spectacular view of the city, in all directions. We took lots of pictures, and tried to avoid being blown over by the high winds up on the roof. After that we decided to try to go out to the Statue of Liberty. Here's where the plans started to go awry.

A lady at 30 Rock told us to walk two blocks over to 49th and 7th and catch the R subway train down to the water. This we handled with relative ease. Once we were there we walked along the water until we made it to the mayhem of the Statue of Liberty ferries. Ultimately, we could easily get on a ferry out to the island, but there was no chance of actually going into the Statue of Liberty because all the tickets were gone. Apparently while it costs money to take the ferry out to Liberty Island, the actual tickets to go inside the statue are free, since it's a National Monument. Had we known this, we could have reserved tickets online before we left, but we knew not. After decided it probably wouldn't be worth it to just go over to the island, we instead decided to go visit the USS Intrepid museum, where the WWII aircraft carrier the Intrepid is docked. We took the #1 subway train back up to Times Square, then walked for what seemed to be an eternity (but in actuality about a mile) over to the water where the museum was. Continuing our bad luck, little did we know that the Intrepid museum closed back in October for a 2-year rehab. Ouch, that hurt.

Having had enough of that, we walked back to Penn Station (about a mile and a half adventure) and caught the first train back to New Jersey. That brings us to now, and it's resting time. It was fun, though definitely looking to have a plan of more things to do next time I come to NYC. This was a good once over to get my bearings and understand how the city is laid out and all fits together.

Tonight is our first game... hopefully we still can curl after those miles and miles of walking. Woohoo.

It only took a month...

I hope you're sitting down... I don't want you to be too shocked, but I finally have my vacation pictures from California online. It only took a month or so... that's pretty good I guess. :)

Joe's Photo Album

Monopoly Money

[This is going to be one of my rare educational blogs where I provide useful information which I have synthesized from across the vast resources of the Internet.]

It's not often I travel outside the US, so until California falls into the ocean and starts printing its own currency, I don't have to worry much about exchanging money. But as the avid readers of my blog may have inferred, I don't like wasting money, or giving more money to "the man" than I absolutely have to. So on my recent trip to Canada, I examined the several ways to pay using their 'monopoly money' (either cash or electronic), to determine the most fiscally-responsible way to beat the system.

There are three main ways to pay for things internationally, cash, debit card (check card), or credit card. As anywhere else in the world, cash is king... assuming you have the local currency in hand. Once you have it, you're all set. Everyone accepts it, and you don't have to worry any more about exchange fees. But how do you get it? There are several options:

1) Exchange your currency for their currency. This is good, in principle, until you look at the rates. Consumer exchange rates are ridiculously high compared to the wholesale exchange rates banks use. For example, last weekend when I was in Canada, the US dollar had a wholesale rate of about .85USD/CAD, but the consumer exchange rate (what you'll likely pay if you walk in off the street) was over .92USD/CAD, a difference of about 7 cents on the dollar! In the short run for small things, probably doesn't make a huge difference, but in the long run, ouch!

$100 CAD = $92.00 USD

If you really want to have the cash in hand as soon as you arrive, you might consider changing it before you go. At home through your bank or online, you'll have the flexibility to shop around for the best rate. You're still going to be paying the inflated consumer rates though. Non-cash options include pre-paid cards (like Visa Travel Money) you load up with money before you go. Though they sound good in principle, but they kill you with fees. First a fee to get the card, then more fees for using it at ATMs, plus the standard exchange fees when using the card. Still a good option if you need lots of money that's safer than carrying around lots of cash, but if you already have a credit/debit card, I'd stay away from it. As far as Traveller's Cheques go, yuck. You'll pay the exchange rates either when you buy them or cash them, plus who uses cheques anymore? People will look at you funny. Cash is king, remember.

2) Use your US ATM card at their ATM. Depending on your bank, you'll pay a flat International ATM Fee, plus a International Transaction Fee for converting the money. For myself with Bank of America, that adds up to a flat $5 USD for the ATM fee, plus 1% of the USD conversion amount for the transaction fee. HOWEVER, you're taking the conversion at the bank wholesale rate. At a Canadian ATM:

$100 CAD = $85 USD + $5 fee + $0.85 (1% fee) = $90.85 USD

This equates to an actual rate of around .91USD/CAD, still cheaper than I could do converting cash. Fees vary widely among banks, and it's really hard to find the right information short of calling your bank and asking them what their fees are. One added bonus with Bank of America is that they are a member of the Global ATM Alliance, which is an alliance between banks in the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, France, China and Australia/New Zealand, allowing fee-free ATM use among those banks. In Canada, the alliance member is Scotiabank... so I could use my BofA card in one of their ATMs and get cash for only the 1% conversion fee.

$100 CAD = $85 USD + $0.85 (1% fee) = $85.85 USD

This roughly .86USD/CAD rate is far and beyond the best you're going to be able to do internationally to convert cash. [Note: Bank of America is very vague as to whether or not the 1% fee is charged for Global ATM Alliance withdrawals. I'm assuming it is, and it's just the $5 fee that's waived, just since past experience is that BofA isn't up on giving up too much money.]

3) Use your US credit card to take cash out. This is a bad idea in the US, let alone internationally. Most credit cards charge up to a 3% fee for the conversion, plus cash advance fees and instant interest. I won't even bother with the numbers, it's so ridiculous.


Once you have local currency in your hands, you're all set. But make sure you don't convert more than you need, because the only way to get the cash back to USD is to pay the consumer conversion rates I outlined before. Better off saving it for your next trip, or if you're not going back anytime soon, go on a souvenir shopping spree.

But what if you need to pay for bigger things, perhaps a hotel, or other expensive things that you don't want to pay with large wads of cash. Just like back home, plastic is a good option. But again, most people have multiple options here too:

1) Use your credit card. Visa or Mastercard are accepted in all the civilized parts of the world. Your exchange rate will be the wholesale rate plus a fixed percentage assessed by your card issuer. Most banks charge between 1% - 3% for this fee. My Bank of America card is 3% on international transactions:

$100 CAD = $85 USD + $2.55 (3% fee) = $87.55 USD

This is still significantly cheaper than any other option, short of the fee-free ATM that we found above. Card fees vary widely, however. Visa is actually converting the money, and charging the issuing banks 1% to do so, however the banks then "pass the savings on to you" by charging you anywhere from 1-5%. However, some cards, such as Capital One's credit cards, actually absorb the 1% that Visa is charging them, and have completely fee free cards. This means with one of those you would pay:

$100 CAD = $85.00 USD

That's it, just the straight wholesale rate and nothing else. Makes it almost worth it to put one of these cards in your wallet if you are frequently travelling abroad, or plan on taking a long trip.

2) Use your debit/check card. Oddly enough, I found it nearly impossible to find information about this for my BofA card. Some references show this as just the 1% fee, others 3%. As with most of my other data, you just have to try it and look at the numbers to figure it out. Your mileage may vary. Either way, I wouldn't expect it to be any worse than using your credit card, if not better.


In summary, know what you're paying before you go. Ask the right questions to find out the right answers about the fees you'll pay outside the country. Also know where you're going. The guidelines I found really only apply to the industrialized world, and may not apply if you're travelling to the middle of nowhere. As I constantly implore, cash is king, and there's probably few places in the world where you can't use a US greenback. I'd always keep a few dead presidents buried in that secret spot in your wallet in case of emergency. When changing money, everyone's out there to take a piece of the action... make sure they don't take too much of yours.

California Adventures, part 1

Avid readers of my blog (if such a thing exists) won't be the least bit surprised at my latest vacation ramblings from Disneyland. But since this trip will likely sound much like the last one this past October, I'll spare the mundane "here's what I did" laundry-list of details. Right now I'm partially soaked after riding the Grizzly River Run which is one of those white-water rafting type rides over at California Adventure. Actually, I didn't get nearly as wet as I expected, I've been on similar, yet far worse rides, where you are drenched by waterfalls and the like. Not a fan of gratuitious drenching... but incidental drenching is fun and part of the ride. :)

Due to the disappointment that the perpetual favorite ride Splash Mountain is currently closed for refurbishment, this trip's Thrilly award for best ride goes to... The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. It's hard to beat the outstanding theming and excitement of a 13-story more-than-freefall in a runaway elevator. :) But while we're discussing it, this is the only place I prefer to be in any sort of runaway elevator.

Tomorrow after a morning in the parks, I'll pack up and drive over to Santa Barbara, potentially during a LA Friday afternoon rush hour. Me thinks it will be quite the adventure... fortunately, I brought my tunes with me... because I'll need it.

Pictures to come, including some pictures of the fabulous Grand Californian Hotel, if I remember to take pictures around here... which is no certainty at all.

If this is vacation, why am I so tired?

va·ca·tion (vā-kā'shən, və-) n.
A period of time devoted to pleasure, rest, or relaxation, especially one with pay granted to an employee.
Hard to believe I call this a vacation so far. I have spent the majority of the last 6 days putting in about 12-16 hours per day volunteering my time officiating for the 2007 US Junior National Curling Championships which have been held this year at our curling club. It's been a pretty exciting week actually, though with four draws a day at 8, noon, 4 and 8, it's been a loooong week. The only reason I'm not up there tonight is that the 4pm and 8pm draws were for tie-breakers (if necessary)... fortunately, they were not necessary. All that's left are two semi-finals tomorrow afternoon and the finals Saturday morning. While it's been a lot of fun, the long days have not exactly been the definition of pleasure, rest, or relaxation. More like stress, drama, and sleep-deprivation. That's why I was smart enough to plan a real vacation for next week.

And that, I will talk about more later... now I'm too tired.

Vacation + Sick = Bad

There's nothing like waking up the last day before you start a 2-week vacation, only to feel like you're starting to get sick. There will be NO sick while I'm on vacation.

I REPEAT... SICKNESS IS NOT AN OPTION.

It's not too bad right now, and hopefully I can ward it off. I'm kicking up the immune system and seeing if I can knock this off early. We shall see.

Tra-cation Part 2

OK, nearly a week later and I need to finish my last saga... which will be short and to the point, I hope. :) Oh, by the way, pictures are online. Click the album link on the right side. -->

The conference I went to was actually far better than I expected. On Tuesday was an all-day tutorial on model-based testing. It was fascinating and actually very entertaining. My only complaint turned out to be a common trend among the entire week: the meeting rooms were a frigid 60 degrees most of the time. I must say, it's rare that I'm looking forward to the breaks so I can go outside and warm up in the sunshine. Regardless, after the day was over, I high-tailed it back to the room, to dump stuff off and headed to the park. Why not, eh?! Spent a fine couple of hours in the undercrowded park and then meandered back to the room for the evening. Slept much better the second night than the first... maybe I was more tired, or maybe it just wasn't a strange new place anymore.

Wednesday began the actual conference, which was basically a whole lot of 1-hour track sessions of which we usually had about 5 different sessions to choose from in any time slot. Various keynote sessions for the entire conference were at the beginning and end of the days, which usually ran from about 8:30am to 5:00pm. This proceeded most of Wednesday, Thursday and until Friday at noon. Some sessions were good, some were less good, some were worse.

That was the conference, or at least enough of it to care. On Friday I packed up and spent the afternoon and evening at the park, until I headed up to the airport to pick up Jonell who came down to spend the weekend with Heather. We went over to Heather's and spent the weekend hanging out with her. It was fun, we did a lot of driving around the LA area, getting lost and seeing where we ended up. Most of the time I didn't have my camera with me though, so no big picture festivity. But on Sunday we went to the Getty Museum in LA, which happens to be about 10 minutes from Heather's place. It was an amazing museum of lots of random artistic stuff. Pictures provided. Want to know more: www.getty.edu.

Sunday evening provided the setting for the celebrity sighting of the trip... we were at a burger place in Encino, and had just finished out dinner when who walks in to the restaurant? None other than American Idol celebrity judge Randy Jackson, along with his wife and son (we presume). And that's the best celebrity sighting I could come up with.

Sunday night came home, the plane touched down at midnight on Monday morning... and I came home and slept and did laundry to celebrate my birthday. Wahoo?

That's the story I've got for now. I'm sure there were things I was going to mention but forgot to... but oh well. You probably didn't care anyway. :)

Tra-cation

I've been spending this week down in the Happiest Place on Earth for work, which is oh so hard work if I do say. :) I have dubbed it "tra-cation" which is training + vacation. I've been attending the STARWEST Conference (which if you're curious, stands for Software Testing Analysis & Review... the West part is simply because this one's in Anaheim every fall, and there's a STAREAST in Orlando every spring). I've been here since Monday, but due to my own busy-/lazy-ness, I haven't blogged the stories yet. So I'll begin from Monday and write until I get tired, then continue when I feel like saying more. :)

So on Monday I headed to the airport to go to Ontario (the city in California, not the province in Canada, duh), and everything went pretty smoothly. It's been my first trip through the airport since the latest security changes regarding liquids and gels, and as a result I checked most everything (toothpaste, etc.) that I would normally keep with me in my carry on. Except I forgot to check some chapstick that I keep in my pocket. Well, here's a useful fact: the TSA couldn't care less about chapstick. I took it out and showed it to the TSA agent and he gave me the "whatever, don't worry about it" look. Nice to see things aren't totally ridiculous. Of course, our pilot for our plane is one of those essential things you "don't want to leave without"... and ours was late because he was stuck on a ferry. Only in Seattle will your pilot be late to the airport because a ferry was delayed.

After that thing were rather uneventful until we made it to Ontario. After making it to the airport and waiting for a surprisingly long time to get my luggage, I went to get my rental car. I ended up with a maroon Mazda 3 hatchback, which I must say I am thoroughly unimpressed with. Of course, as a rental car I don't mind too much, considering it was only $170 for the week. Then I navigated the LA freeway system to make it to the Disneyland Hotel. All I can say is thank goodness for GPS navigation devices. I brought mine and it was the best thing I ever could bring.

At around 5:30pm I finally made it to the hotel and checked in. Now, this is the first time I have ever stayed in the Disneyland Hotel, for one main reason... I'm cheap. But since the company is paying for it and this is where the convention is, it was a nice deal. Without even requesting it, I got a room on the 8th floor of the Sierra Tower (one of three towers), right across from the elevators, on the side of the building that faces towards Downtown Disney. I couldn't have requested a better room. The windows open up to a mini-balcony from which I could look down at the ESPN Zone and the Rainforest Cafe, among other things, and see the Matterhorn and Splash Mountain in the distance at Disneyland. I recommend to anyone who ever has the opportunity to stay in the Disneyland Hotel to request the Sierra tower facing that direction, unless you have a problem with noise.. because Downtown Disney stays hopping until late into the morning and even with the sliding glass doors to the balcony closed, it's still somewhat noisy. I didn't mind it.

After I hauled all my stuff in, I left and walked through to the other side of Downtown Disney where the parks are. Knowing that I'm going to come back down to California for a wedding in February, I bought an annual pass (which was an excellent choice, especially considering this week has been a lot of evenings where I'd head over to the parks for a few hours here and there). In yet another in the series of firsts, I went to Disneyland by myself. I've actually heard mixed reviews of this, some people claiming it's nice because you only have to please one person--yourself. Others have said that it's not as fun when you don't have others there to share it with. I'd have to put my opinion somewhere in the middle. There are definite advantages to going around the park by yourself. Certainly just the fact that I tend to move pretty quickly around when there's somewhere I want to get to, and not having to slow down for people I'm with who, shall we say, are not so fast, is a nice thing. Also, I do what I want to do, and don't have to worry about what anyone else wants to do... this isn't such a huge deal though because at Disneyland I pretty much will go on any ride and am pretty easy going in that regard. Perhaps one of the nicest things--which I have fully taken advantage of--is the relatively recent invention of the "Single Rider Line". This really only applies to a few rides around, most notably Splash Mountain, but the concept is simple. Some rides have very odd seating configurations, in the case of Splash Mountain 6 people to a log. Disney has two very simple rules that they live by when placing people in ride vehicles: 1) Never split up a group, unless they are larger than a single ride vehicle. 2) Never combine separate groups in close quarters unless they have their own seat. OK, so the 2nd one is hard to put into decent words, but I'll demonstrate by example. On Space Mountain, the ride vehicles are 6 rows of 2 across. Now if there is a group of 3 and single rider, they will put the group of 3 in two rows (2 and 1) and put the single rider in a third row (1 only). They won't mix strangers up and put the single rider in with the extra from the group of 3. Space Mountain does not have a single-rider line because they rarely have a use for needing someone to fill out a car. Splash Mountain's logs of 6 individual seats are different though. Disney will happily put people in their own seats, so if a group of 5 comes along, the only way they can fill out the log is if they have a single rider, or else they'll leave the seat empty. Same thing with a group of 3 and a group of 2, or occasionally if they have several large groups at once (say, two groups of 4, but no groups of 2 around). OK, so the logic of this may not fascinate others as much as it fascinates me, but suffice it to say, there's plenty of use for single-riders on Splash Mountain. As a result, single riders can actually go in the exit and get in a special line (which by my experience, never had anyone in it), and get on the ride usually within about a minute, even if the regular line for the ride is 30 minutes or more long. It's a wonderful thing! (A side note: groups could use the single-rider line too, if they don't mind being split up all over the place.) So yes, after digressing about the advantages of going to Disneyland by yourself, I now will advocate for the other side. Going to Disneyland with other people is just plain more fun. There's something about wandering around with people you know and just having fun with friends that going by yourself can't beat. So in summary, going by yourself is fine if you have to, but I wouldn't plan to do so just voluntarily (though I may end up doing so in February if I can't find anyone else around who wants to go. HA!).

More details about the conference itself will be coming next, but it's currently 11:30pm on Thursday and I need to sleep. Pictures are also coming once I get to an actually fast internet connection. :) Until then....

Airport Adventures

Well my vacation came to an end with a 12-hour flight adventure. It all started out at the Birmingham airport which is a surprisingly nice little airport. That flight left without a hitch and I made it to Dallas/Fort Worth. A 2-hour layover in DFW gave me plenty of time to have some lunch/dinner. Of course, as is my experience whenever I go to DFW which feels like the largest most impossible to navigate airport in the world, my flight arrival and departure gates were about a mile apart. But it's nice to see that they have a new (well, new to me at least) sky tram that connects the entire airport. Far more efficient than the old days when you had to walk that mile across the terminal.

Fortunately for me, I had a relatively good experience at the airports. Not so for some of the people I saw elsewhere at the airports. The gate next to mine at DFW had an announcement similar to this:
4:30pm - "Attention passengers, we just want to inform you that the flight to New York that has been delayed by air traffic control will likely not be cleared for departure until 7:00pm. However, there are no spare gates and the airport is full, so we will be boarding the flight at 5:00pm and then sitting on the tarmac for up to 2 hours prior to takeoff. We just wanted to let you know so you can prepare for it."

Well, that wasn't me. So now I make it to San Diego, stop number 2 on my flight adventure. After having to walk outside from one terminal to another and then pass through security again, which was a pain in the neck, though I was switching airlines, so it's understandable, I then made it to my next departure to Seattle. The gate right next to me, another departure to Seattle that was scheduled to depart an hour and a half earlier than mine. Their flight was delayed because the plane arriving was delayed, and as a result my flight that should have arrived 1.5 hours after the other actually ended up arriving first. HA. At least the luck was with me.

But finally I'm home, reasonably adjusted to Pacific Time again. Time to upload the last of my pictures and get them all labeled. Vacation is a lot of work... where should I go next? :)

In the Heart of Dixie

Sunday morning in Birmingham, I went to church with Andrew, after which we headed out to the Sloss Furnaces. The furnaces are remnants of an old iron smelter in Birmingham, that has now been turned into a historic landmark and history center. We went to the visitor's center and learned more about it then wandered the old furnaces. History at its finest, and then we headed to lunch. Lunch was aptly Bar-B-Q at the Golden Rule, a classic barbeque place in Birmingham... and it was mmm mmm good. Now that's barbeque.
Once we had our fill, we headed downtown to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and museum. Quite appropriate considering Birmingham is often credited as the start of the US civil rights movement. This was another very interesting and well-designed museum, though no pictures because of their strict "no photos inside the museum" policy. I tried to figure out why exactly this museum had such a policy that so few of the other museums I encountered had. Now in general I don't find the need to take a lot of pictures of things in museums, because you really don't get much out of it later. If anything photos would serve as quality advertising of the museum and its quality. Perhaps it's out of a respect for the sanctity of the subject. Perhaps it would detract from the other patrons experiences throughout the museum. That may infact be the best reason of all, but my only detraction from the museum was the barrage of kids who would keep steamrolling through, paying little attention to the many displays and content that was there. But thinking back, what kid actually wants to read all of that? They want the interesting displays and interactive stuff. Fair enough... I guess anything they take away from it is better than nothing.
Following the museum we went on a driving tour of Birmingham. Lots of historic, old, new and interesting stuff to be seen everywhere. We drove past Rickwood Field, the oldest surviving baseball stadium in the country. Saw the buildings of downtown, and the fancy houses out in the suburb of Mountain Brook. Eventually came back and ended up relaxing back home where I was able to watch the series finale of The West Wing. (Hey, everyone has his priorities. :)) After that we headed out to dinner and came home. Fly home the next day and the vacation is over.

Last leg of the journey

Andrew and I got up and got on the road once again, bound for Birmingham, Alabama. The nice part of this leg was that I didn't have to drive. After dropping off my car in Clarksville, Andrew's car would provide the transportation for the rest of the journey. Which gives me ample time to take more pictures along the trip. It's amazing how much easier it is to take pictures out of a moving car when you're NOT driving at the same time. :)

We headed out and had a stop at Sonic for lunch on our way to historic Lynchburg, Tennessee. What makes it so historic, you ask? Simple... the home of Jack Daniels Tennessee Sippin' Whiskey. Yet another tour of a distillery... after reading my blog you might think that I have an obsession with distilleries, and that surely if you've seen one you must have seen them all. Well, you're probably right on the second count. But they certainly are a sure-fire way to find something to do along your journeys. The tour of Jack Daniels distillery was unique in several accounts: first, it was by far the biggest, they turn out millions of cases a year. Second, it was by far the most obviously contrived and organized tour I went on... almost like an ad pitch more than anything else. And finally, the tour guide was both the worst, yet most entertaining tour guide on any of the tours I went on. He was unmistakably Tennessee, including every spiel he gave the tour group starting like, "Friends... this is the Jack Daniels distillery"... "Friends, how do you drink your Jack Daniels?" Personally, I think he had some Jack Daniels for breakfast that morning. A trained monkey could have provided the information about as well as he did, though he was definitely an entertaining fellow... until you asked him a question that you'd think a man giving a tour would know, but if it wasn't in his script he was clueless. Oh well, I guess that's one place you can't beat the small distilleries.

In any event, after that we were essentially on the road back to Birmingham with a stop at Huntsville, Alabama, also known as Rocket City USA. We visited the US Space & Rocket Center (also home of NASA's Space Camp). This included both the museum of the history of space flight, and everything surrounding that, as well as what I affectionately call the "Rocket Graveyard" where they have about a dozen old rockets from the early US space launches. We wandered around and visited everything, but not too much else I have to say about that I guess.

We got back on the road and made it down to Birmingham. Our original intent was to grab some dinner and head over to an outdoor shopping mall where the Birmingham Symphony was having an outdoor concert. But alas, we arrived to find out that the outdoor concert was cancelled due to inclement weather. I guess they thought it would rain, or they figured nobody would show up because it was sooooo chilly (I think it was about 65 or so... whatever people). So instead of that we headed over to the dollar theater. Every show $1, if you don't mind watching movies that were released 3-months ago. Enjoy a movie for $1, and have $6 small popcorn. :) OK, not quite like that, but they have to be making money some way, I guess. We watched The Pink Panther starring Steve Martin. I had originally wanted to see this movie when it came out but never got the chance, so what a deal. In this case, I'm glad I only paid $1 and not the $9 or so it would be back home. It was well worth $1, but I'm not sure how much more than that. It was a funny movie, but not so great. But of course, everyone else has probably seen it, so why do I even need to tell you that?

By then it was after 11pm and time to sleep. One last full day of Birmingham before I head home.

The home of Country

Another bright and early morning, getting ready to spend the day in and around Nashville. Today starts out with Andrew and I exploring Clarksville waiting for Rebekah to get done with work so we can all go down to Nashville. We checked out various parts around Clarksville and visited a rather excellent museum that had a little of everything in it. Of course, the kids exploration area seemed to be the most fun we had, rolling balls along these roller-coaster type tracks, then playing with bubbles. Sometimes it's the simple things. :)

After lunch at Chick-fil-A we met up with Rebekah and headed down to Nashville. Nashville adventures began with the ginormous Opryland Hotel. We parked and walked in like we owned the place, the only way to visit a hotel you're not staying at and not get crazy looks from people. :) First of all, you stick a casino in the basement of this place and it would fit in perfectly on the Las Vegas Strip. Atriums everywhere under huge glass ceilings, waterfalls and rivers through the walkways, and unmistakable southern style. It was pretty hip (and gets quite the photo
dedication in my album).

Following that we got the driving tour of Nashville, driving by the Grand Ole Opry (which is right next to the Opryland Hotel), traversing music row where many of the big record albums are housed, and visiting the Parthenon.

Yes, the Parthenon... straight from Greece to Nashville. Someone had the bright idea to build an exact scale replica of the Parthenon right in Nashville, Tennessee. Why? You know, as much as I read all of the signs and historic information as I was walking around, nobody seemed to answer that simple question. I think the answer is an equally vague: "Why not?" After the Parthenon we dropped over to the Tennessee Capitol area of Nashville and checked out the capitol mall grounds and such. Nice, scenic, but the most interesting part was probably the 95-piece carillon that is at the far end of the mall. This supposedly plays "famous Tennessee songs" every hour on the hour, though we never were able to hear what it sounded like. Surely it was most excellent if it actually played.

Enough sightseeing, time to head downtown. We made it down to 2nd Avenue and Broadway, the music centers of Nashville. Had dinner at a brewery/restaurant that reminded me a lot of the Ram or Rock Bottom, but the food tasted much better. :) Being in the South, I had the obligatory chicken and ribs, which was quite tasty indeed. At least quite a bit tastier than I think I've had in recent memory back home in Seattle. But I also admit, I don't often go around craving barbeque in Seattle. But I digress... after dinner the nightlife of the clubs was starting to pick up, with quite literally live music coming out of every doorway along the street, from the restaurants, to the clubs, to even the ice cream parlor. We dropped by the Nashville Crossroads which is a smallish bar down on Broadway (supposedly pseudo-famous, though I am no country music afficianado, so don't ask me). A country group was playing there, playing a lot of music. Such as I don't regularly listen to country music, I knew few of the songs they were playing, but the music was still good. After an hour or so we hopped down to the ice cream parlor down the street, and had ice cream while listening to a solo guitar singer, who was also quite entertaining. We didn't stay out too late considering we had about an hour drive back to Clarksville, then had to get up early to get on the road again in the morning. Nashville was definitely the only city I came across that actually had things happening after about 5PM... I guess that means something.

On the road yet again...

A few days down the road and I'm back to update the last 3 days of adventures. I got out on the road in the rainy morning from Lexington and headed out bound for Clarksville, Tennessee. Rain, sun, rain, sun, rainsun, I made it to my first stop the historic (aren't they all?) Makers Mark Distillery. Managed to arrive there just in time for the first tour of the morning. By now, of course, I'm an expert on bourbon distilling, but fortunately this tour actually was interesting and had a bit more science and detail than the previous tours had. I also put on my John Ratzenberger hat once again and found the hand-bottling assembly line where the distinctive red wax dipped seal is placed on each bottle. The red wax being their trademark, the obligatory gift shop contained a wide selection of red-wax-dipped merchandise, most of which was actually rather cool. I also had my chance to dip my own bottle of Makers Mark bourbon to seal the bottle.

On the road again, this time stumbling across Lincoln's boyhood home which is really nothing more than a little falling-apart shack on the side of the highway. Stopped, took pictures, done. Next I came into Hodgenville, KY, which stakes claim to the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Museum in town was nothing to write home about (but writing on the internet about is apparently OK). The museum had about 12 scenes with wax figures of Lincoln throughout his life, and accompanying story to go along with it. Not glamorous, especially compared to the museums I have experienced earlier on the trip, but hey, it's history. Following that and a stop at McDonald's (the first, and I guarantee last such stop I will make on my entire trip, bleah) I ended up at Lincoln's Birthplace. This is the good stuff, probably because it's actually a national park and monument, and thus has real funding. The "symbolic" log cabin that he was born in (they don't actually know if it's the actual one, since it has been moved around so many times in its history, but they think at least part of it's legit) is enclosed in a huge marble building that is vaguely reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Interestingly enough, that building was built back around 1910, long before the actual Lincoln Memorial was built in the 1930's. The Sinking Spring (apparently famous, though new to me) was nearby along with the site of the Boundary Oak (the large oak tree that is often referenced along with Lincoln's birthplace, but died a few years back).

Next stop was Bowling Green, Kentucky, home of one of General Motors vehicle assembly plants (in fact, the plant that manufactures every Corvette made) as well as, to no great surprise, the National Corvette Museum. Now I have no great interest (nor small interest, for that matter) in cars whatsoever. As long as a car gets me where I need to go in an efficient manner, I don't care too much about the finer details. But I succumbed to the intrigue (and the need to kill some time) and went to it. My suspicions were confirmed, the museum was filled with quite the obsessive car crowd--people who love everything cars, especially Corvettes. Sure there were some interesting displays, and it was interesting seeing some of the older cars and the like... but that's about it. The engines and inner-workings of the cars, not the most interesting in the world to me. But I succeeded in killing probably an hour or so and was back on the road.

At this point came the difficult decision-- really need to kill more time because I'm way ahead of schedule, but what is there to do? Pulling out and scanning the AAA map of Kentucky I notice a marking for "Jefferson Davis Memorial Monument." It's reasonably on the way I need to go, why not? Off I go along the highway, and eventually see something that looks vaguely reminiscent of the Washington Monument in the distance. Now, I must admit seeing this in the middle of Kentucky farmland sure is a shock, but I was reasonably certain that this was what I was looking for. Made it out there and yup, sure enough, it's a monument to Jefferson Davis, complete with an elevator that will take you up to the top (for a small fee, of course, which I did not pay). Yeah, uh-huh, ok, time to go.

Rounding the turn and headed down to Clarksville where Andrew's sister Rebekah lives. I arrived and found her, Andrew would be about 3 hours later arriving, so I went with Rebekah to meet one of her friends at a local bar they go to. This bar is the definition of redneck, with a Harley shop across the street, and colorful, yet friendly people who frequent the place. We ended up playing pool for several hours, prior to heading back to meet Andrew at Rebekah's apartment. I have a renewed appreciation for Washington State's new smoking ban that keeps smoking out of bars.

Today's blog has been brought to you by: Parentheses... they make the world go 'round.

Frankfort and Louisville

Well, my day started out much as I had planned. I got out on the road under a light rain and headed towards Louisville. I'm glad I remembered to bring my raincoat from home with me, because it certainly came in useful today.

As I was starting out to Louisville, I came upon the exit to go to Frankfort... and in the spirit of adventure, I decided to take a small detour. That detour to Frankfort turned out being far more interesting than anything I found in Louisville.

My first stop was the Kentucky Capitol building in Frankfort. As the rain continued to come down, I made my way to the ultra high-security building. The ultra-high security included a guard with a metal detector, which I only had to walk through because as I went in the door, I looked over to the side and the guard dude was like "oh, come over here".

I navigated through the crowds of elementary school kids touring the capitol, and found that it was remarkably similar to the Washington State Capitol in Olympia. The notable differences were that it was much more open and welcoming (far less security and closed doors than Olympia), and the House and Senate chambers were way up on the 3rd floor rather than on the main floor, that was rather odd I thought, but maybe that was just me.

After the capitol I dropped over to the Kentucky History Museum in downtown Frankfort. Another outstanding museum, this one very similar to the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma. But I've found myself a bit museumed-out as these all start looking the same after a while. Still interesting stuff. This one also had a special exhibit about flags, and the history of US flags as well as Kentucky flags. That was really interesting.

I almost decided it was time to head to Louisville, then changed my mind and headed to the north edge of Frankfort to visit the Buffalo Trace Distillery. A slightly different distillery tour than yesterday's tour of the Woodford Reserve, and actually still interesting. It's funny how each distillery claims all of the reasons why their bourbon is the best in the world. :) However, I actually did enjoy the Buffalo Trace a bit more than the Woodford Reserve. Does that mean anything? Probably not. The especially interesting part of this distillery was that several of the brands they make there are hand-bottled. This quite literally means that there is an assembly line of folks who fill, label, and package the bourbon. I felt like I walked into an episode of Made in America and that John Ratzenberger was going to walk into the room. Fascinating stuff though, that was probably the most fascinating part of the tour.

Finally time to get out of Frankfort, and I got back on the road to Louisville. My destination? The historic Churchill Downs racetrack, where just 4 days ago the 132nd Kentucky Derby was run. Little did I know that today was also a race day at Churchill, so there were lots of people around. Though I managed to get waved into a parking lot without having to pay, nice man who really didn't care much at the gate. Anyway, went on a "guided tour" of the track, which really consisted of going out and watching a race, which was fun. Then I explored the Kentucky Derby Museum which is on the ground of the track. Another well done, highly-interactive museum which I enjoyed. After a bit, I went back out to the track and decided it wouldn't be right if I didn't place a bet at Churchill Downs when I was there, so I did so. I fully expected to come away with a betting slip "souvenir" of my trip to Churchill Downs, but much to my surprise, my horse came in second, and I won the exacta, netting me a $6.40 profit which caused me to promptly return my souvenir for cash. Oh well, that's where I say "take a picture, it will last longer".

And so ended my day at Churchill Downs. By then it was after 5pm, which means the tourist world shuts down, but I still took the opportunity to drive downtown Louisville, explore a bit of the Ohio River and check out the monumental sky-high Louisville Slugger bat at the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. It looks far more interesting inside the windows than it did from the outside, but I had a action packed day regardless. Headed back to the hotel in Lexington and here I am.

Tomorrow I'm off to Nashville. Plans to stop at yet another distillery, where I will test the famous mantra "seen one, seen them all", followed by a stop at Lincoln's birthplace and such. The rest is a mystery. You never know the mysterous powers of the brown signs along the highways.

The Old Kentucky Home

The sun shines bright on the old Kentucky home. Today started out much as I expected, trying to get Amy up before noon proved futile. But that was OK, I took the opportunity to have a relaxing morning and get a little bonus sleep.

The mission was to make it to the Woodford Reserve distillery, though taking the scenic route left us travelling for miles along narrow 2-lane roads through the Kentucky countryside. Horse farms, rolling hills, tree-lined highways are my view of Kentucky thus far. It would have been much nicer to look at, had I not been travelling along these narrow roads at 55 mph trying not to slow down traffic, gripping the wheel firmly each time an oncoming car whizzed past in the other lane.

After quite the adventure we made it to civilization and to a Dairy Queen in the middle of nowhere. Now it feels like we're in the Kentucky I've heard about. Nice country people, but be sure to speak loud and slowly, and you'll communicate just fine. :)

Finally we arrived at the Woodford Reserve distillery in Woodford County. We arrived just shortly before the 2pm tour which was starting, and had quite the entertaining tour guide. I've been on many winery and brewery tours in my past, but never a distillery. Apparently this is the best of all tours, and our tour guide wasn't in a hurry to get rid of us, as the tour lasted just short of 2 hours. Good thing people weren't in too much of a hurry. Definitely an interesting tour, but Amy and I couldn't figure out if that was just because we've been on so many wineries and breweries that the distillery was new to us, or if it was actually an interesting tour. Perhaps the later. I now could talk at length about how bourbon is made, but won't. Follow the pictoral tour in the photo album and you'll get the idea. The most interesting thing I learned is the answer to the question on everyone's minds... if the bourbon is too strong, how do you get it down to a consistent proof? People have speculated complex answers to this, but the simplest answer is the correct one. They water it down until it gets to the right alcohol content. There seems to be slightly more to it than that, but ultimately that's what it comes down to.

After a drive back to the hotel and dinner at Applebees, it's time to relax for the evening. Tomorrow I'm leaving the working Vault team here and driving over to explore Louisville on my own. At least that means I don't have to worry about them sleeping in until noon when I'm ready to leave. There are some advantages to travelling on your own, I guess!

Joe's Great MidWestSouthern Adventure

The adventure begins. I'm writing this update from a hotel room in Lexington, Kentucky, on day 3 of my adventure.

Day 1 - Travel to Indianapolis was quick and efficient. The brief layover at Chicago O'Hare was just long enough to stretch my legs (and walk about a mile through the airport to get from one gate to the other) and then take off again. The flight from Chicago to Indianapolis was certifiably the shortest flight I have ever taken in an airplane. It makes the flight from Seattle to Spokane feel like an overseas flight.

The efficiency ceased the moment the plane touched down in Indianapolis. We arrived at precisely 8:30pm, at which point it felt like the entire airport was shutting down. All stores and food places were literally locking their doors, and then we realize that American Airlines has exactly 1 baggage crew working, with the task of unloading planes and delivering baggage to be claimed. As a result, my luggage was not in my hand until 9:45pm.

Luggage in hand I proceeded to my rental car, a lovely silver 2006 Hyundai Sonata. Nice car, so far it has served me well. I made it to West Lafayette by about 11:00pm, fortunately for me still being on Pacific time, it only felt like 8pm or so.

Day 2 - Scenic Indiana. Krista and I went to the Sunride Diner in Lafayette for breakfast, which was about as much of a diner as anyone would imagine. But accordingly, the food was great. We then took a walk around Lafayette and its historic places, which mainly consisted of its downtown historic district, and the old train station on the Wabash River. I must say, the water of the Wabash river looks about as disgusting as it possibly could. Not somewhere I'd like to go swimming.

We then went and checked out Purdue's campus and Krista's office and lab in the Chemical Engineering building. Pictures say much more than words, so check the photo album for interesting stuff there.

The afternoon consisted of adventures at Wolf Park just outside of West Lafayette. Wolf Park is a wolf education and research facility that has a couple dozen wolves, foxes, and coyotes. It was quite an interesting place, including demonstrations of feeding and handling the wolves. The main enclosure at the Wolf Park contains 7 wolves, which get fed a fresh (or sometimes frozen) deer 3 times a week. We were fortunate enough to view such a feeding, though the wolves were apparently not hungry at the time. Of course, Wolf Park doesn't have any trouble obtaining fresh deer due to the efficiency of Indiana drivers who hit them on highways throughout the state with great frequency. An additional feature of the Wolf Park is the wolf and bison demonstration, where as one might expect, they let loose a couple of wolves in their bison range where the bison and wolves are natural adversaries. Once again, on this day the wolves were in no mood to cause a ruckus with the bison, so not too much of interest occurred. But seeing the bison wandering around was definitely interesting.

After the adventures at Wolf Park, we went to the Tippecanoe Battlefield historic site. The only slightly-interesting museum was there, as well as the actual battlefield which is now a historic monument. The Battle of Tippecanoe was between the US and the Indians in 1811, which set the foundation for General William Henry Harrison's future presidency. After wandering the grounds for a bit, hunger set in and we headed back to Lafayette for dinner.

Dinner was good, then we went to Krista's and watched a movie, the 1938 Oscar winner for Best Picture, "You Can't Take it With You". A surprisingly hilarious movie that I would watch again, actually. Very entertaining. Sleep after the long day was next on the menu.

Day 3 - Off to Lexington - An early start to the morning had me on the road to Lexington, and into Cincinnati by about 11:00am. After exploring getting lost in the less-than-desirable part of the city, I ended up at the Cincinnati Museum Center, which is contained within the old Union Station. The highlight of that was definitely the Cincinnati History Museum. I have been to many quality history museums in my travels, but none as outstanding as this museum. First, it was huge, once inside it just kept going and going. Then, it was almost 100% interactive or 3-dimensional, or something interesting stuff to look at. Not just words on displays, but context and interesting stuff. An interesting exhibit about machining tools had a man who was demonstrating the working tools, and I proceeded to spend at least a half hour listening to him telling stories about the history of Cincinnati. That was the interesting stuff. Plus, it makes old men happy when you're interested in hearing their stories. All in all an outstanding museum.

Also in the Museum Center was the Natural History Museum. This was a good museum, but appeared to be a bit dated. It was geared much more towards children than adults, but did have its fair share of interesting exhibits.

After the museums, a driving adventure around Cincinnati took me to the Roebling Suspension Bridge, at the time it was built the longest suspension bridge in the world. After a quick drive across and back, I took a moment to snap some pictures of the bridge, along with the nearby baseball and football stadiums. Following a visit to the presidential birthplace of our 27th president William Howard Taft, off to Lexington I went.

I finally tracked Amy down and after we went to dinner, in this hotel room I am. Tomorrow's adventures may take us down to the land of the bourbon distilleries, or it may not. Who knows? We'll see how early I can wake these silly people up instead of sleeping until 1pm like they usually do.

Where's the blog?

I will not neglect my blog. I will not neglect my blog. I will not neglect my blog. I will not neglect my blog. I will not neglect my blog.

There, now that I've scolded myself for not blogging more recently, it's time for a real update. We'll go ahead and pretend that nothing interesting has happened in the past 3 weeks, and start fresh. Today at about 3:00pm I officially left work and started my vacation. I'd like to thank my company for taking this week to remind me why I was going on vacation. Things were nothing but crazy all week long. But that is the last time I will think of work until the 16th, because I am now on vacation.

Tomorrow morning I will head to SeaTac and hop on a plane to scenic Indianapolis, Indiana after a brief layover in Chicago. From Indianapolis I shall begin what I will call "Joe's Great MidWestSouthern Adventure"! I'll spend the weekend in with my friend Krista who is at Purdue in West Lafayette, IN before I begin my driving adventure. The short version of my plan is to drive down to Lexington, Kentucky where my sister will be at the time, on a stop during her 6-month promotional tour for Coca-Cola. After a few days I'll continue on down to Nashville, Tennessee where my buddy Andrew will meet me and we'll spend a couple of nights at his sister's place. Following that I'll head with Andrew down to Birmingham, Alabama for the last weekend before I fly home on Monday the 15th.

What happens in the time between each of those checkpoints is still a mystery. Only the trusty AAA Tourbook knows for sure... and it's not telling. I'll endeavor to take a goodly number of pictures along the way and post them when I have the chance. Hopefully I'll have some interesting things to blog about!

Let the adventure begin.